


ExSol - SFW

by Certeis



Category: Original Work
Genre: Mecha, Multi, Multiplicity/Plurality, Other, Queer Themes, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22156861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Certeis/pseuds/Certeis
Summary: Stranded, cut off from Earth, the people of the ExtraSolar territories eke out a rough existence on alien worlds inhabited by the machines of a dead race locked in a never-ending war.  Amidst the danger, certain ExSols are born Ascended. Attuned to the alien machines in mysterious ways. Mech pilots. However, even in this hostile environment, people are still people, and political struggles are just as deadly as alien threatsThree of these young pilots find themselves trapped in a web of intrigue centuries in the making, and must find a way out either through, or with each other.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter length will be segmented differently than the NSFW version. There should also, on average, be more content completed in this version. NSFW content is canon though it wont be relevant to the overall story.

Nina watched the line of four-legged walker robots scuttle into position behind a worn-down hill. The same hill that had periodically hosted squadrons of such machines for weeks now. The hill was the ideal location to launch missiles against a nearby structure, which Nina also kept an idle eye upon. What purpose the grand metallic structure had once served was anybody’s guess, every bit as much as it was anybody’s guess how many thousands of years ago it had served that purpose. The last of the robots reached its destination, slowly settling into place, and there was a moment of silence.

Nina took a bite of her protein bar and started to count. The last few dozen times it had taken them twenty five seconds to come up with a firing solution. The bar tasted like dirt, more like dirt than it was supposed to. She scowled in annoyance and stuffed it back into one of the little compartments in her rover and clicked her tongue to activate voice commands.

“Call Nugan,” She commanded.

“Nina I'm busy you-” a crackly, impatient voice came through the rover’s speakers after a very brief delay.

“Oi! Nugan you shifty little shrew, you told me the protein combiner was fixed!” she shouted over his whiny voice.

“I did! ...I mean, it is. Fixed it last night.” Nugan answered with only the barest hint of conviction.

“Lies.”

“No, I-”

“Lies!!”

The line went dead as Nugan cut the connection. Nina clicked her tongue to reactivate voice commands again but before she could call Nugan back to yell at him some more, a flurry of motion from the foot of the hill caught her attention. Two dozen missiles streaked away from the hunched squadron of robots, arcing through the air and flying straight into a hail of fire from the fortress’ anti-missile defenses.

“Playback recording in twenty minutes,” she muttered at the rover’s computer. It beeped at her in response, prompting her to record her message. “Make sure ‘rina knows Nugan is useless.” The computer beeped again, acknowledging that her request would be followed.

The remnants of the precursor's society, the machines that were currently killing each other, were typically divided into four factions. Before they had reawakened and resumed their war where they had presumably left off, Earth Coalition had their own names for them, based upon some kind of structural analysis of where their strongholds were located along the gateway network. ExSol society just called them based on what their logos looked like: Talon, Cat, River, and Eye. Talon was the dominant faction on the planet, and it was Talon's fortress currently under siege by River’s missile launchers.

Several missiles detonated against the walls and outer periphery of the fortress, filling the air with roaring percussion even from all the way over where Nina was. A hangar on the ground floor of the fortress opened, and about thirty intercept craft poured out, racing towards the robots attacking their base of operations. The vehicles, were a design that the ExSol’s called ‘Locusts’ and they were basically just plasma casters mounted to crummy anti-grav engines that suspended them a few feet off the ground. They zipped along the ground, taking a roundabout route that passed very near Nina’s own rover. The sound of their engines roared to a crescendo as they passed not much more than ten meters away. She knew their scanners detected her, and that Talon would be aware of her presence, in much the same way that that the fortress was aware of the strange tree-like flora that grew all around it, or in the way that it would be aware of the existence of piles of nearby rocks. Which was to say, it couldn’t care less so long as she didn’t get in their way.

The squadron of thirty Locusts descended upon the group of walkers just as they fired a second barrage of missiles at the fortress. The unwieldy walker robots tried to turn around to face their attackers, bringing the small autocannons mounted into their egg-shaped torsos to bear against their agile attackers. As had been the case for months, they were easy prey. The Locusts nimbly avoided the walker robots’ awkward attempts to bring their guns to bear, while their plasma casters tore superheated holes in them in turn.

In a matter of minutes, the twelve artillery walkers were all either disabled or totally scrapped, and the remains of the fortress’ interception force started to peel away and return back to their hangar. Nina’s hands went to her rover’s controls, and she started the vehicle up, heading towards the remains of the artillery walkers. The fortress would dispatch a team to start scavenging the remains of the walker robots, as would the factory that sent them. There would be about a twenty minute window before they both arrived and clashed once again, and Nina had every intention of making the utmost use of that time.

Her rover tore up the sand and dirt as it brought her to the site of the battle. Nina’s practiced driving brought her around a pair of scrapped walker robots. A melted hole in the side of one had detonated the artillery piece’s ordnance and the resulting blast had triggered a chain reaction that had taken down the one next to it. The resulting mess was two utterly useless unsalvageable hunks of molten metal that she had no interest in, and so she went in deeper to the site of the battle looking for something more noteworthy.

She spotted a walker robot with its two front legs melted off, and a small but well-placed hole burned right through the control module far off to her left. She immediately swerved her rover around and drove towards it like a madwoman, spinning her wheels at the last minute to do a 180 degree spin. The rover squealed and protested and the centrifugal force made her stomach lurch but she cued the breaks and came to a stop with her cargo bed facing the downed machine. Nina grabbed her plasma cutter and welding mask off of the passenger seat of the rover and hopped out onto the scorched dirt below. Her heavy boots cruched against some partially glassed sand and she only took a brief moment to maintain her footing before jogging over to the fallen robot to inspect it.

There were several armor plates that had come loose but were mostly intact that she could probably pry free and use just for the titanium, steel and carbon that would be contained within, mbut those materials weren’t especially difficult to find, and certainly weren’t worth Nina risking her life for. Insead she spotted a missile rack mounted upon the robot’s back, the firing port jammed half open by a fragment of metal from some other machine. The fuel inside those missiles, that’s what she was after, and the explosive payloads weren’t useless either. Nina cracked her knuckles and started to climb, finding hand and footholds in the robot’s shredded armor and strange, alien joints. She ascended the fallen robot and got up onto its sloped back. She moved in a crouch, keeping her center of gravity low on the angled, unsteady terrain as she approached the jammed missile port. Her plasma cutter came out, her welding mask went down, and she started quickly shearing off small bits of metal and machinery away from the edge of the missile rack to get it all the way open. She worked quickly but carefully, not interested in hitting the warhead of the missiles directly with the small stream of magnetically bottled plasma and accidentally detonating them.

The port came open, and then a few small cuts later, she sheared the entire missile rack free of its port. She grunted and started to remove some of the missiles, they were relatively small projectiles, maybe a meter and a half long, slender and not too heavy. She carefully grabbed three at a time and went down to her rover, piling them into the back until she had all twelve of them. As she strapped them tightly into the cargo bed of her rover, she heard the grinding sound of treads ripping up the coarse earth. She looked over her shoulder and saw a small convoy of five reclamation machines getting closer, coming to start salvaging the raw materials from this skirmish on a scale that she herself couldn’t ever manage.

“Bereaver’s tits,” Nina cursed to herself and vaulted back into her rover, tossing her cutting equipment back into its proper location on her passenger seat and starting the engine. Tires screeched and crunched as the vehicle lurched into motion. She drove at a ninety degree angle away from where the other convoy of salvage machines would be approaching from. She drove up a hill, her vehicle groaning in protest as it struggled against both gravity and how hard Nina was trying to push it. As she crested the rise, she allowed herself one single glance over her shoulder to see if part of the convoy had broken off to pursue her.

A small treaded vehicle had broken off from the pack and was cruising up the hill directly at her. These particular vehicles were called Widows, and were known to chase down small human vehicles to extract their materials, and occasionally even killing humans for the same reason. She barely registered the pursuit before a turret mounted on the side of the Widow fired out a stream of dark red web-like filaments that expanded outwards in the air and descended towards her rover. Nina swerved off to the side in a panic as the red web descended upon her and narrowly missed. That stuff was a chemical adhesive and if it got in her wheels she’d be spun out and immobilized almost instantly. If it weren’t mortally dangerous, it would almost be funny that Nina had much more to fear from a machine designed to gather resources than she did from one designed for combat.

Nina got out of sight from the Widow as she went over the edge of the hill and started racing down a slight decline. She might not be able to outrun the advanced alien vehicle in an extended chase, but if she got far enough away then the machine’s calculation of whether or not Nina’s raw material was worth its time to chase down would get worse and worse, and eventually it would give up. It reached the top of the hill only a few seconds after she did, the treads allowing it to smoothly but swiftly crawl up over the lip where her own rover had crashed and bounced around like popcorn kernels over a fire.

The Widow aimed and fired again, casting another wide web of sticky red filaments at her. She spared a glance over her shoulder again to try and gauge where it was aiming, and swerved to the left this time. Her rover jerked to a stop, sliding and skidding across the dirt as the adhesive stuck to the outside of the cabin, draped itself across her wheels, and jammed up the mechanism. The resulting jolt slammed Nina’s ribs against her steering wheel and she groaned in pain as dizzying lights flashed before her eyes and consciousness almost slipped away for a brief moment. 

The Widow rolled steadily closer to her rover, the sound of dirt grinding beneath the treads, the sound of Nina’s own death growing louder and louder as she groggily reached for her plasma cutter to maybe try and cut off the rover’s door. With luck, she could make some distance and the alien machine would salvage the missiles and the materials from the rover and not the water and minerals from Nina herself. Before she could ignite the tool to start cutting her way out, a series of three consecutive cracks drew her attention through the window. She saw sparks flying and the Widow lurched slightly off to the side, spinning to face its attacker.

“Ugh. Why her,” Nina muttered to herself, almost wishing that the Widow would just disassemble her into her constituent parts so that she wouldn’t have to talk to the pilot of the Mech that was currently rescuing her.

The strange-looking tripedal craft was called Twinshya and Nina was very familiar with it, being one of its main mechanics. Twinshya’s body was sleek, elongated, and close to the ground. It had two legs in front and one in the back which gave it a sort of a strange jolting gait and a twisting, undulating movement when it turned. Near the back of the body, the pilot seat curved forwards and up in a way that resembled a scorpion’s tail. Nina had always hated that Twinshya looked kind of like a scorpion but didn’t have a scorpion-themed name. Totally wasted opportunity.

It loped up a bit closer to Nina’s rover and turned, facing its sides towards the Widow and fired all three of the autocannons mounted along its body there. The weapons cracked in rapid succession, tearing bits of armor off the Widow and making it reel backwards once again. Widows were well-armored armored vehicles but didn’t have much in the way of offensive capabilities. This one fired a pair of small plasma casters at Twinshya. The superheated matter streaked towards it but as it got close it was pushed off to the side by Twinshya’s deflectors before they could burn holes in the Mech’s patchwork of armor. Even though Twinshya was a rag-tag machine that was basically held together by Nina’s spot welds, it was still an Ascension Mech, and it had access to technology that was unable to run on an autonomous craft.

Suddenly, Twinshya twitched a little, and a red glow suffused through it, seeping out from cracks and joints in the machine’s armor. The Mech’s pilot reoriented it, facing the primary railgun directly at the Widow as the machine shifted into offense mode. The cannon fired, and the hyper-accelerated slug ripped a hole straight through the Widow, the friction and diffusion of heat from the projectile melting and slagging the machine in an instant.

Her Rover’s computer beeped as it received an incoming connection request, and she was sure to get her very loud and pained groan out of the way before the computer started sending audio back.

“Ay, thanks for savin’ my bacon, ‘rina,” Nina answered cheerfully.

“By the Archangel, Nina, what are you even doing out here?” Carrina’s voice replied with an exasperated and patronizing sigh.

“Scavvin. I got twelve undetted missiles in my—”

“Make sure ‘rina knows Nugan is useless,” Nina’s own pre-recorded message interrupted her explanation. There was a moment of awkward silence as Nina tried not to snicker at the situation. Carrina had no sense of humour at all, she’d just get annoyed.

“Scavenging like a reckless idiot if you’re getting chased by a Widow,” Carrina replied, ignoring the interruption. “Cut that crap off your rover and lets get out of here in case more come, Call for help if you need it, I’m Counter-Pulsing in thirty.”

“Yes’m,” Nina replied with all the fake saccharinity she could muster, and killed the connection. Twinshya’s red lights went off, shifting the Mech into defence mode and also cutting off Carrina’s ability to talk for a few minutes. Twinshya circled Nina’s stranded rover for a good thirty minutes watching for more pursuit while she cut her own door off and then started melting and cutting away the adhesive that had immobilized her. She got the rover moving again without further interest from the robots, not that any scav team would be a real issue for Twinshya. She drove off towards their camp and Twinshya followed along beside her at a pace that was more than leisurely for the Mech even if Nina was moving about as fast as was safe.

They travelled in silence through the foothills that lead towards their camp, the dirt roads and paths carved through the vegetation ages ago and maintained by the repeated press of wheels and treads and, in Twinshya’s case, metal legs. Nina really wanted to mute and refuse incoming voice connections but she knew it would only be a symbolic gesture. Carrina had an administrative override on their internal network and could easily force a connection through any block Nina could put up outside of melting her speakers into a useless pile of scrap with her plasma cutter. After the third long glance, she tucked the cutting tool away and out of sight so as to remove the temptation.

“So what’s the problem with Nugan?” As expected, Carrina’s administrative override forced the connection.

Nina winced, her stomach turning at Carrina’s condescending attempt to bond with her. Still, she knew it wouldn’t fly to be rude when Carrina was trying to be nice, especially about something she was planning to talk to Carrina about anyway.

“Tol’ me he fixed the protein combiner. Lied. Still busted. The piking shrew-face is gonna toss his work on my back  _ again _ .” Nina muttered.

There was an extended silence, and eventually the speaker crackled back to life with her answer. “I’ll talk to Sam about it.”

‘Talking to Sam about it’ was code and it meant nothing would change. Nina rolled her eyes and didn’t press the issue, she was about to be in enough hot water with the entire camp as it was. They wound their way up the side of what qualified as a mountain on this planet. Their camp was built in the ruined husk of a Post-Connection observatory so it was situated on the highest point on the continent. The camp itself was a mix of hastily refurbished and addended sections of the old structure and ruined, overgrown sections.

Twinshya finally left her side, striding off towards its hangar where Nina herself would probably re-arm the autocannons, load in a new railgun slug, and patch up and dings in the armour later that night. Nina drove the rover over to their garage, backing it up into the charge port so that she could unload the missiles strapped into her cargo bed a little easier. A boy who was technically Nina’s apprentice and also far too big for his age, Ryan, was there. He was tinkering with one of their other rovers and looked over at her excitedly as she pulled up.

“Nina! What’cha… Err… Where’s your door?” he asked, frowning at Nina’s dust-coated clothes and the melted, empty door frame on her passenger side. He took two steps forward, getting uncomfortably close to her, his concern for her eclipsing his sense of boundaries.

“In the back. Widow jus’ ‘bout caught me. Yer gonna hafta rip out half of the frame to re-seat it.” Nina tried not to scowl at the impressionable boy and took a half step backwards to reclaim her personal space from him.

“A Widow? You’re joking. Are you…” He took another half-step forward as though to offer her a conciliatory hug and Nina responded by turning away and walking towards the back where her salvaged missiles and passenger side door were both strapped. 

“Got a dozen undetted missiles here, leave those for Nugan.” She laid a hand on the missile rack and gave Ryan a purposeful look over her shoulder that made him pale a little bit. “If you det ‘em accidentally the damage’ll be on my butt. And you’ll probably be scrapped.” She left him standing there awkwardly and went off to another part of the garage to where her bike was stored.

Less than a few minutes later, she was crouched low over her bike, roaring down the slope of the “mountain” towards the city of Abrandia, away from the recriminations of her peers and away from the consequences of her actions.

***

_ 1-13:25 NinaS: _ ‘ _ Where r u?’ _

_ 1-13:27 Butterfly: _ _ ‘1Sec.’ _

_ 1-13:28 NinaS: _ _ ‘U better’ _

_ 1-13:42 Butterfly: _ _ ‘Sry had a meeting. I’m heading to SolSanna’s.’ _

_ 1-13:42 NinaS: _ _ ‘Omw 2 abrandia need to see u’ _

_ 1-13:46 Butterfly: _ _ ‘Sure. You alright?’ _

_ 1-13:47 NinaS: _ _ ‘Almost got scavved by a widow life is shit’ _

_ 1-13:50 Butterfly: _ _ ‘Oh wow, that’s so messed up, I’m really sorry.’ _

_ 1-13:51 NinaS: _ _ ‘Its fine i just wanna see u’ _

_ 1-13:52 Butterfly: _ _ ‘Sure. SolSanna’s?’ _

_ 1-13:52 NinaS: _ _ ‘C u soon butterfly’ _

_ 1-13:53 Butterfly: _ _ ‘<3’ _

Abrandia was the second largest city on the planet, and largest on the continent. It was built on one of the numerous stretches of flatlands that were typical of their planet, Ishtar. After the alien machines had awakened and started furiously trying to kill one another, catching humanity in the crossfire, Abrandia had been the only human settlement not torn apart by resource-gatherers like the Widows. It had been a tiny little settlement at the time, some religious group had set it aside for themselves to live apart from the rest of ExSol society. As it had turned out, the site of Abrandia’s founding was far enough away from any major mineral or resource deposits to avoid the attention of the precursor’s robots, and so refugees from all over the continent had settled there.

As Nina sped along the road to Abrandia, one of the city’s guardians came into view. Nina recognized the Mech, Titan, even from a distance. The ten meter tall humanoid Mech stood just beside Abrandia’s main gate. It was mostly still, but obviously powered and active. Bristling with racks of missiles, autocannons, and even sporting a disintegration beam, Titan was most certainly the most powerful weapon on the planet. Titan had been built from scratch using precursor technology, hence the sleek, streamlined humanoid form. Twinshya, by comparison, was a fully built precursor machine that they had shoehorned a human-sized cockpit into so that Carrina could pilot it. One of Nina’s guilty passtimes had been drawing up a speculative set of blueprints for the machine (that she was pretty sure was at least 90% accurate.)

Titan, of course, totally ignored her. It was there to fend off precursor robots, which did harass the city occasionally. Well, that, and to remind Abrandia’s rival power, Hallucia, know who was in charge. She drove her bike up to the gate and stopped it right next to a customs booth where a bored-looking border agent glanced over from his screen at her.

“Miss Sahara, nice to see you, as always,” The guard droned with fake interest. He held out his hand and she handed him her Identification badge so that he could scan it for her before letting her into the city. She didn’t bother responding to him, he apparently knew her name and she didn’t know his. It was an awkward conversation waiting to happen, so she avoided it.

She made her way through the winding streets of Abrandia’s slums. Most of the city was kind of a built-up slum, a legacy of the city’s origin as a refugee camp. It meant that navigating the city streets on a vehicle was slow going, but fortunately she wasn’t going far.  _ Hangman’s Crossing _ was a relatively large community center in the eastern residential sector and she circled her bike around the parking lot until she found a spot to park it. The crossing consisted of a large open plaza with various structures and open amenities fanning out from it radially. A park dominated most of the eastern section of the ring, while subsidized restaurants and various other amenities occupied the northern and western section. A huge, seven storey library towered over the plaza from the south, casting a shadow over part of the square. In the center, a large fountain sculpted in the likeness of the Archangel Agrianna stood proudly, her wings and arms spread, water pouring down from her eyes in rivulets to splash into the pond below her.

Nina cast a brief scowl at the Archangel as she always did, and headed towards SolSanna’s, a little cafe almost invisibly nestled between a large dance hall and a grocery distributor. A pretty, waifish blonde boy was sitting at a booth, his face subtly lit by the screen of his portable terminal. He was dressed down today in a pair of tight jeans and a hoodie, but he was wearing a nice pair of dangly silver earrings and his hair was immaculate as always. She sat down next to Robin, her boyfriend, and draped her arm over his slender shoulders so that she could crush him close to her in an embrace.

Robin squeaked a little bit in surprise and recoiled skittishly in the way that he did before he realized it was her. “Miss Nina!” he cooed happily, letting her crush him in her hug a little bit before he giggled and squirmed at the extreme pressure. She relented, and leaned down to kiss him while still keeping his body close to hers.

“Hey, Butterfly,” she murmured softly. She felt the pent-up anxiety start to bleed out of her uncomfortably in ways that made her tremble just a little bit. She realized that she hadn’t felt fine at all after the Widow had attacked her, just numbed. She’d had a few somewhat close scrapes, but nothing like that, and now she was thawing out and truly feeling the terror of the situation.

“You don’t sound fine, Nina,” Robin plucked the thought out of her head, looking up at her with those innocent eyes that she thought couldn’t possibly be cuter.

“Yeah… I don’t.” She agreed, still feeling tremors running through her body. Her breathing accelerated a little, against her will, and she gave her head a shake that didn’t seem to fix anything at all.

“Tell me what happened,” Robin asked gently, taking her hand in his and giving it an encouraging squeeze. Nina sighed slightly, she’d been planning on just using Robin to blow off some steam but instead the little bugger coaxed every little detail out of her. She relayed the day’s events to him, pausing a few times to squeeze her eyes shut and steady her breathing.

“I’m gonna be in the hole over this. Might’a broke the bots’ pattern. Sam flips his crib whenever I take risks, even ones that don’t... Ugh.” 

“Can something like a single Widow break such a solid pattern? That precursor installation has been locked for… how long? Isn’t it over a year now?”

“Who knows. The ‘cursor’s automated bots are real loopy. Sam sure thinks patterns are fragile. Fragile enough that I get my tail chewed off for any nudge.” One of the serving staff apparently recognized Nina and took it upon herself to bring her a coffee. She set the drink down on the table and gave the two of them a warm smile. Nina tried not to give her the stink eye, it was weird of her to intrude but she was trying to be nice, at least.

“Soooo~ Guess what I just dug up today?” Robin grinned at her conspiratorially. The look on his face suggested that he’d been struggling to keep his lips sealed about some bit of information he’d dredged up.

“What secrets did my stealthy little butterfly uncover?” She chuckled at him fondly and dragged him into her lap, ignoring the coffee steaming away on the table.

“You asked me if I could find any strange new Mechs popping up into Abrandia’s registry, remember?”

“Ye. You told me you’d also track down some livin’ precursors.” Nina frowned at him, remembering the smart-ass response he’d given her and not gotten disciplined for. The nervous laugh that came out of Robin just confirmed that he’d just remembered that detail as well.

“Weeeelllll. I found something.” He grinned at her victoriously, as though that would get him off the hook. It wouldn’t.

“Spill.” She squeezed him threateningly and Robin squeaked a little. She quite enjoyed that noise.

“A Mech showed up in the registry two days ago. The pilot was registered as Dawn, and the Mech was registered as Dusk. I thought it was a prank or something, since you can’t just register a fake name.” Robin prattled out his answer energetically, clearly more motivated by the idea that he’d found something Nina had asked for rather than frightened by her implied threat.

“Two days? Could it’a been here longer?” she probed, hugging Robin close to her and abandoning the playful threats. This was quite possibly the machine she’d seen using full-on gravity manipulation out in the forest a few times this week, not just a hover engine. Only an Ascension machine, one piloted by a human, could use that kind of technology.

“Maybe. I could try to dig up why they needed to dock the machine, what work needed to be done. Might be able to extrapolate what its been up to prior.” He gave her a curious look, as though he’d thought this was just a joke that Nina hadn’t expected an answer to.

“Do it. What else?” Nina looked down at him with a wicked grin and gave him a playful grope to try and cut the seriousness. Robin was far too pretty to have a worried look on his face.

Robin squeaked a little and his tone quickly changed. “A-Anyway. Turns out this pilot, Dawn, is real. The name might be fake but they’re an off-worlder so the Abrandian government couldn’t verify it and just took their word for it. Sounds like they’re all the way from Neo-Venus.”

“From NV? What’re they doing out here in the butt of nowhere, then?”

“Haven’t figured that one out yet. They’re not taking contracts or anything. They sure could if they wanted to, with a Mech that advanced.”

“Hrmph. What’s the Ascension on it? Maybe I can swindle Sunrise outta it.” Nina prodded Robin for a bit more information but kept it playful. She didn’t want Robin getting too stressed out over this.

“Sorry, Miss Nina, sounds like  _ Dawn _ has Zenith, not Pulse.” Robin sounded sincere in his respectful tone but Nina knew the brattiness was lurking just below the surface. It seemed possible that he was being a slight bit snarky about her saying Dawn’s name wrong, after all. She decided not to punish him for it, all things considered he was showing a lot of obedience.

“Figures. Only Pulse Mech on the planet  _ would _ be Twinshya.” Nina nudged at the little muscle, the little reflex inside her chest. She had the ability to trigger her Ascension, Pulse, at any time. Doing so would flood her with a euphoric high, send her into a state of hyper-awareness and enhanced reflexes for about three minutes. Unfortunately, immediately after those three minutes had expired, she would Counter-Pulse for another three minutes, causing her diaphragm and ribcage to lock up. Her breathing would stop for that time and she’d pass out unless she was on a ventilator. A Pulse Mech was fuelled by the activation of Pulse by a human, or presumably by one of the precursor race, back when they had yet lived. To that end, the cockpit of a Pulse Mech like Twinshya was equipped with a ventilator so that the pilot could stay conscious.

Nina pushed away the temptation to trigger her Pulse as she usually did. Now wasn’t the time. It was never the time. “Whatev. Zenith Mechs are all trash. No firepower, no point.”

“I hear this machine is pretty much the gleam of the gates. Seems like it might be as advanced as Titan. Haven’t gotten a chance to catch it in the flesh it yet but I’m trying.” Robin grinned at her suggestively and Nina did her best not to roll her eyes at his awful double entendre. She was surprised to find her mood lifting a bit, she’d initially been pretending for Robin’s sake but then he’d gone and made it genuine.

Nina’s hand terminal buzzed in the padded seat next to her leg, and she glanced down at it. She thought she saw a notification for a new message on the screen at the strange angle, but it was gone instantly as the terminal switched over to a low-battery logo and started powering itself down. Probably wasn’t important, if it was anything at all.

“Where’s yer brother?” Nina asked suddenly.

“Still out of town on a job. I’ve got our place to myself,” Robin answered eagerly, excitement flashing in his eyes.

Nina grinned at him, and the look in his eyes confirmed the implied invitation. “Let’s go, Butterfly,”

***

Nina awoke from her post-coital comatose state with a soft grunt. Robin was next to her, sleeping peacefully in his nightgown with his hair tied up so that it wouldn’t get tangled as he slept. She watched him quietly as she slowly awakened, not wanting to disturb him since she had no idea what kind of sleep schedule he was on; he could have only recently gone to bed for all she knew. She rolled over a little and looked at the nightstand. Her hand terminal was there, power off but battery recharged, Robin must have plugged it in for her. She sat on the bed next to Robin’s sleeping form and flicked the terminal on, a sense of dread slowly coiling in her stomach. It went through the sequence of powering up, connecting to the wireless network, and then fetching her messages. Ten unread messages, three from Carrina, two from Ryan, one from Nugan, and four from her boss, Sam.

_1-14:41 NotActuallyMyMom:_ _Nina, You, Sam, and I need to have a talk, can you come by his office in ten minutes?_

_ 1-14:50 NotActuallyMyMom: _ _ You’re not here. I know you got my last message. This is serious Nina, you almost died today, please, we need to talk about this. _

_ 1-15:32 Samooel(Cowface): _ _ Nina you cannot turn your GPS off. Literally, by contract, you cannot turn it off. Turn it on, answer our calls. Now. _

_ 1-15:40 Samooel(Cowface): _ _ This is not a hecking joke, where are you? _

_ 1-16:10 Nucant: _ _ TWELVE missiles!?!?! Nina youre awesome. _

_ 1-16:45 Samooel(Cowface): Where the heck are you? _

_ 1-17:10 NotActuallyMyMom: _ _ We’ll have to talk tomorrow, Nina. You can’t just disappear on us like this. _

_ 1-17:42 Ryakie: _ _ Hey Boss……. So, Sam came into the workshop which he never does and he asked where you were and I dunno I panicked I told him you were here but left after we got our work done so he thinks you’re on break and gonna be right back so basically I’m really sorry I think I made it worse but I just wanted you to know please dont be mad at me _

_ 1-17:42 Ryakie: _ _ See you tonight? :x _

_ 2-00:25 Samooel(Cowface): _ _ Where the heck are you? _

  
  


She sighed, terminal flopping into her lap as she relaxed the hand that was holding it in a position to be read. This was bad. In a way, Sam couldn’t really fire her, he needed her _.  _ That being said, he had a temper and it sounded like he was raging pretty hard at her right now. She couldn’t get a mechanic job in Abrandia, not with her criminal record. She’d either have to live on basic assistance or move, blow all her savings on going cross-continent or maybe even off-world. She’d have to leave Robin behind, and her dream of piloting a Mech of her own one day would slip ever further away. She may even have to cut into her surgery fund… as pitiful as that little pile of savings was.

She looked over at Robin, watching his chest rise and fall steadily. Part of her wanted to reach out to him, to vocalize all her worries, to hear his gentle reassurances, but she stopped herself. Silently, she got dressed and left, heading back towards their camp to deal with her problems herself. Even if everybody was asleep by the time she got back, it somehow felt like this disaster would be better if she was there when they woke up.

***

Another sensor sweep went out, as it did every forty seconds, and once again Dawn’s eyes flickered to their instruments for just a brief moment. The readout again displayed a 1.74 x 10 -23 % chance that the sweep would have detected the presence of Dawn’s Mech through the stealth field. Three airborne drones buzzed almost directly overhead. Dawn’s instruments calculated and displayed possible firing solutions for the Mech’s surface-to-air missiles. None leapt out of the shoulder-mounted missile rack, and the drones flew past unmolested.

Dawn ignited their Ascension. It was a power that typically slept within Dawn’s chest, a power that would do little but harm them on its own, but it was the lifeblood of Dawn’s Mech, it was a key that unlocked the full strength of the technology that the precursor race had left behind. The machine lurched out of standby, and started moving towards the watch post under Dawn’s command. Another sensor sweep came, and then a second, and a third. The stealth field showed a higher and higher, yet still pitifully small percent chance of detection, until Dawn was standing on the edge of the encampment. There would almost certainly be a short range X-Ray scanner in the center of the station, something that  _ would _ pierce through Dawn’s stealth field if they brought the machine any closer. Fortunately, Dawn had absolutely no need to stay hidden to get the job done.

The stealth field dropped, and Dusk’s weapons came to life. Two nearby robots and a gun emplacement noticed the Mech immediately, and started to swerve their weapons to face it. Most standard ExSol technology would barely even register on their radar, the same way a bow and arrow wouldn’t be worthy of notice.

Dawn aimed and fired the heavy plasma caster on Dusk’s right arm, slagging a hole clear through the the center of one of the robots and continuing onward to melt off the weapon emplacement of the other. The Mech’s powerful gravity manipulation and its legs launched it forward towards the gun emplacement. The vibroblade attached to Dusk’s left arm passed through the gun emplacement like it was passing through air. None of the three were able to fire a single shot as Dawn disposed of them; Dusk was not a bow and arrow.

The flying drones began to swerve back around, and Dawn’s instruments presented them with a firing solution for the missiles, which they approved. There was a slight  _ thunk _ as three missiles shot out of Dusk’s shoulder and into the air. Dawn leapt several dozen meters into the air with a strong shove from the gravity manipulators, and spun around to face the aerial attack craft which were the watch post’s main defenses. Dawn flared on the stealth field for just a moment to scramble the aircraft’s missile locks and then opened up with the autocannons mounted on Dusk’s torso. The aircraft tried to evade the missiles Dusk had fired. One got clipped and started to spin out, another evaded right into a hail of autocannon fire and was torn apart, and the third swerved high. The aircraft’s countermeasures no doubt worked frantically, and were rewarded with a premature detonation, allowing the craft to avoid the worst of the payload.

Dawn pulled the Mech back down towards the ground with the gravity manipulator, Dusk’s power reserves blaring a warning at them for overusing the energy-intensive feature of the Mech. Dawn paid the alarms no heed, they knew Dusk’s limitations better than a pilot for whom those alarms had been designed. The missile control system came up with a new target lock for the remaining aircraft, and this time Dawn fired two missiles at the one craft, and then ignored it, leaving the drone to its fate.

There would be another five robots on the way, they patrolled the perimeter, but Dawn knew how much time they had until it arrived. Dawn calmly walked their Mech around the mechanisms that composed the watch post, autocannons shredding another fixed gun emplacement as it popped out. They located the X-Ray scanner that was painting a target on Dusk and very deliberately melted it into a pile of molten scrap with a single shot of their plasma caster. Dawn just as calmly re-enabled their stealth field and headed off in the direction of the patrol, whose approach was now audible and coming across the speakers in the cockpit. The four robots barely even reacted as Dawn sliced them apart with their vibroblade and then deactivated the stealth field.

Ten minutes later, Dawn had downloaded the information they had come for, and left the watch post as intact as they could. A response team would undoubtedly show up soon and Dusk only carried so much ammunition. Besides, the attention of the precursor’s machines wasn’t the only thing Dawn needed to evade.


	2. Chapter 2

The knock at the door was soft and unimposing, it was a knock meant to check to see if Nina was awake, rather than one to awaken her. Nina was sleeping, technically, but she was expecting this knock, and sleeping lightly enough in that moment that her eyes opened and she sat up.

“Who’s?” She asked drearily, rubbing her eyes.

“Carrina,” she called softly through the door. She entered after Nina grunted her approval. The ghost of a scowl temporarily replaced her look of concern when she saw Nina was topless but it faded almost too quickly for Nina to notice. “Are you alright?”

“Fine.” Nina grumbled, still a bit sleepy. She let her breasts remain uncovered for a few moments, almost as a challenge, but finally relented and picked up the blanket and pulled it up to cover herself.

“Why’d you ignore our messages? You know your contract.” Nina being covered, Carrina clearly felt empowered enough to come forward and sit on the edge of the bed.

“Went to go see Robin. Terminal went kaput. Battery. Wasn’t thinkin’ that Sam’d shred his mirror over nothin’. Why’d you even tell him?”

“Nina, I fired the Gauss cannon _to save you._ You know Sam always wants a report when I do that, those slugs aren’t cheap.” Carrina sighed a little bit and managed to not roll her eyes condescendingly at Nina this time.

“Keep tellin’ Sam that stupid cannon is bleedin’ metal ‘cuz we use pure tungsten.” Nina muttered.

“Nina that’s not– Listen, if you’d just given a report with me, this wouldn’t have been an issue and you could be spending all day with your boyfriend after we book you some trauma counseling. Now Sam’s all lathered up about pattern breaking.”

“Pattern already wobblin’ I checked my logs, the scavvers n Widows came five minutes ’fore they shoulda. Real breaker is that Mech I told you ‘bout.” Nina stood up a little straighter. This was what she had been preparing for. Getting the truth out before they pinned the blame on her for when the behavioral pattern of the precursor’s machines finally did break and become unstable and unpredictable again.

“The… Mech? What Mech?” Carrina asked, suddenly confused.

“The stealth-tech one that I spotted in the woods last week. Robin found a new Mech on the books in Abrandia, somethin’ from Neo-Venus. Robin says it’s Zenith. Most stealth Mechs’re Zenith.”

“Some… Mech from Neo-Venus illegally poaching our tech. An invisible Mech, that you couldn’t get clear footage of.”

“It’s. Stealth.” Nina scowled, overwhelmed by the stupidity of Carrina’s complaint. More proof, and Carrina still played the needlessly stubborn skeptic. “An’ I don’ drive t’wards plasma casters firin’ off in the canopy to get a better rez on a video for detective Sam. I almost get slagged enough as-is, thanks.”

Carrina heaved a heavy sigh, leaning back a little and giving Nina a sad look, like she was about to tell her that her kitten had died. Nina almost wanted to glance at the foot of the bed to make sure that her kitten, Jeffie, was still there. “I want to believe you, Nina, but I’m having a hard time. You know Sam won’t buy this.”

“Well, s’why it helps t’have someone with four lobes backin’ me an’ not three.” Nina cast her blanket away and got out of bed. Carrina let out an exasperated and embarrased noise at Nina’s lack of modesty and looked away as she went over to get dressed.

“Fine. Show me your new proof and I’ll see what I can do. If we actually have a poacher from Neo-Venus with a gleaming Mech then I guess we’ll have a serious problem. A stealth Mech, no less.” Carrina remained seated on the bed but kept looking at the far wall. Jeffie was actually awake now, and the little kitten hopped up onto her lap, making the woman jump in surprise.

Nina snickered at Carrina awkwardly trying to dislodge the affectionate kitten from her lap as she wiggled her way into a bra that she still wasn’t used to yet. She grabbed her hand terminal once she had her underwear on and sent the relevant files to Carrina.

“...Dawn and Dusk? Nina you can’t be serious.” Carrina shooed Jeffie off her lap and the kitten padded over to Nina. He squeaked and put his paws up on Nina’s leg, begging for attention.

“Abrandia registry doesn’t joke. You know that.” Nina grabbed her crumpled pants off the floor where she’d left them and pulled them on, at which point Carrina finally stopped staring at the far wall and looked over at her.

“No, I guess you’re right on that one. What makes you think this Mech is gleaming enough to have functional stealth tech?” Nina was a little surprised that Carrina was pretending to believe her, but she probably felt guilty over ratting her out to Sam.

“Lookit the autocannon ammo. 25-series rounds. No garbage pile like Twinshya is loading those.”

Carrina frowned and flipped through the files. “Are you even supposed to have this ammunition manifest?”

“Prob not. Butterfly doesn’t explain, I don’t ask.”

“That boy…” Carrina muttered to herself, probably holding herself back from embarking on one of her rants about how he was a bad influence on Nina. “Well, I’ll look through all this. Do me a favor and double check Twinshya’s deflectors? I got a little more rattle from that Widow than I should have.”

“I gotta replace half the conduit in that bucket and I’ve negative bits of conduit t’do it with.” Nina grumbled, picking up Jeffie and giving him some attention so that he’d stop clawing at her ankle.

“Do what you can with what you have,” Carrina sighed. She left Nina without even so much as a look, instead staring at the files Nina had given her. Maybe she _was_ taking it seriously, she wasn’t that good of an actor, after all.

A little while later, Sam found her in the workshop, disassembling one of the missiles she’d salvaged that Nugan hadn’t quite gotten to yet. He stood there for a second, a scowl on his face and angry comment waiting on his lips to be unleashed.

“Your terminal ran out of power? Do you really expect me to believe that?” he asked.

“Don’t expect. Don’t care.” she muttered, carefully removing the fuel housing of the missile she was working on and setting it to the side.

Sam frowned at her for a moment, before he sighed and straightened up a little. “Nina I’m putting your contract on probation. We’ll re-evaluate your position with us in three weeks. Until then I’m empowered to terminate your contract for breaches similar to the one you pulled last night.”

“Fine.” Nina rolled her eyes. Sam couldn’t _really_ fire her, he barely had the crew necessary to keep Twinshya running as it was, and he was too cheap to pay anybody a real wage, it was why he’d jumped at the chance to hire a delinquent like Nina with a shady off-the-books contract in the first place. The fact that Nina was a good mechanic was just his dumb luck.

Sam stayed there for a few moments, expecting her to say something, but she didn’t, and he eventually just walked away and left her alone as she tore apart the missiles she’d nearly died to acquire.

**

Miya yawned sleepily as consciousness slowly came back to her. She stretched, wiggling her toes and cracking her fingers. Her leg brushed up against something warm in her bed, something unexpectedly lying right next to her. She jumped in fright, yelping softly and recoiling. A man was sleeping there next to her, breathing softly, his short dark hair flopped over his forehead. She recognized him, and memories of last night slowly came back to her.

“Ugh,” she muttered softly, scowling at the intruding man and giving him a gentle kick. “Hey. Wake up.” The man stirred and Miya struggled to remember his name. Her companion, Naz, just giggled at her dilemma and offered no help. He was her dalliance and not Naz’, after all. 

“Whuh?” he groaned sleepily, turning over a little but not sitting up properly.

“Wake up. You said you’d be gone before morning,” she kicked him again a little more firmly and he groaned in response.

Slowly he sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking at her in a somewhat dopey way. His eyes flickered to her chest for a moment but she held the blanket up and scowled at him to keep his attention on her face. “I said what?”

“You promised you wouldn’t stay the night. Did you crawl into bed with me after I went to sleep?” Her withering glare made him recoil a bit and blush in embarrassment.

“I… don’t…”

“Whatever. Just— Just get dressed and get out,” Miya gathered up some blankets and used them to cover herself as she went into her bathroom. Whomever this shrew was, she wouldn’t be inviting him back to their house again, she hated people being there when she woke up and her regulars were men who knew that.

_“Perhaps a narrower range of courtesans would fit your requirements better, sister?”_ Naz’s voice spoke teasingly in the mind that the two of them shared.

_“Don’t want people getting clingy,”_ Miya responded, rolling her eyes as she washed her hair. _“Better if I don’t see them too often. I have to keep a wide rotation.”_

A few minutes later, Miya stepped out of the shower and saw that her guest was gone, and had left behind only some contact information on a piece of paper. She stalked over to the paper and snatched it up off the bed, crumpled it up, and tossed it into the recycler without reading it. When she went over to fish out her hand terminal from the drawer she’d locked it in, she saw it had a notification on it. It was a reminder that they had a meeting this morning, and she cursed when she realized that she only had a few minutes to get going.

The light of Ishtar’s star was dim and cast shadows across the city of Abrandia as it began to dip towards the horizon. The planet’s forty three hour revolutionary period meant that most people measured two twenty one and a half hour sleep cycles per ishtar “day”, so second morning came just as the star was starting to hang low in the sky. Miya walked to the tram station and waited at the back of the small group of people on the platform, avoiding contact. One of Abrandia’s four aging and banged up maglev trains came along and stopped at the platform with a soft hiss.

The trip was as uneventful as she could have hoped for, she stood at the doors to the train and stared at the city rushing past her as the train went several stops to her destination. Waking up next to her guest had set her into a bad mood for the day and it felt like she had something crawling under her skin.

With Miya stewing and fidgeting, Naz took control and looked around the train cart. She saw someone who reminded Naz of her girlfriend Marielle, she had similar dark and curly hair that hung down around her shoulders, though this woman was a fair bit older. She smiled warmly at the woman and waved. The woman returned the gesture though didn’t smile quite as much in return. Abrandia was a nice place, people were warmer and friendlier here than many other places, but strange people smiling at you on the train was perhaps still a bit off-putting for most.

The train stopped almost directly in front of the low-key militia building that was actually an administrative office but looked just like any other residence in the neighborhood. Naz headed into the foyer, flimsy door to the street slapping shut behind her with the guarded door into the compound lying just ahead.

“Morning, Naz,” The door guard whose name they couldn’t remember waved at her and then punched a code into the door to open it. The fact that he’d addressed the two of them as Naz wasn’t surprising, most of the people at her job knew Naz much better, which was mostly by Miya’s own design.

“Unseen blessing, friend,” Naz waved at him as she walked past. As she spoke the words she concentrated slightly upon the melody playing in her mind. Their Ascension, Tempest, was a constant presence. It wasn’t a distinct thinking, feeling individual like Naz and Miya were, but rather it was a vague melancholic sensation and a soft discordant song that rose and fell, seemingly at random. Many ExSol’s possessed of the strange, rare Ascension knew it wasn’t just random. There was a deeper force at work, an echoing whisper left behind by the Precursors for the ExSol’s to find and decipher.

_“There will be time for your superstitious obsessions later, c’mon,”_ Miya snapped Naz out of her daze and took the two of them through the militia’s administrative building towards the conference room. The door had been left cracked open, and their uncle Wasseim, Knight-Captain of the Abrandia Militia, was already droning on about something or another inside.

“Forgive our sloth, Uncle,” Naz apologized with a calm smile as she walked into the room. Wasseim and the other pilots just gave her a very cursory glance before she slipped into her seat. One of the pilots in particular, Analu, gave her a dirty look as though she’d offended him. Naz returned the look with a warm smile, and Analu just shook his head as though she’d offended him further, and looked back at Wasseim.

_“I’m gonna punch him right in the face one day,”_ Miya thought, and Naz just giggled.

The briefing didn’t go terribly long before Naz closed her eyes, drowning out her uncle’s boring recitation of the briefing and letting the melody of Tempest envelop her. Tempest was pretty today, the humming vibration in her chest had a slow, soothing tempo that she enjoyed. Some days Tempest felt angry and agitated, and that was distressing. Those days, she blocked the melody out as best she could, which wasn’t always very well.

“Oi! Naz! Quit dreamin!” Her uncle Wasseim’s voice cut through the reverie. She opened her eyes slowly and blinked at him, confused.

“...Uncle?” she asked.

“C’mon, kit, can’t’cha at least ‘tend to pay attention? Makes me look like a goof, y’know?”

_“He doesn’t care if he looks like a goof. Just thinks he’s protecting us.”_ Miya’s thoughts interjected themselves into their mind, along with a feeling of incredulity and exasperation. Miya didn’t much care for their uncle, but Miya didn’t care for anybody.

“Will try, Uncle,” Naz smiled at him sincerely even as Miya grumbled silently. Wasseim’s shoulders slumped in defeat and he sighed.

“Heckin’ ridiculous,” Analu muttered just loud enough that a few people heard but not loudly enough to announce it to the room.

“Care to repeat that, Ana?” Miya asked with a scowl, her intensity overriding Naz’ calm presence in that moment.

“Yeah, it’s ridiculous that you can’t take this job seriously, we have Hallu terrorists in the city, Talon is on a security upswing, and mos—” Analu squealed as Wasseim walked up behind him, grabbed him by the wrist and twisted it behind his back in a display of martial training. They knew that their uncle hadn’t seen any active hand-to-hand combat in probably decades, but he made it look as easy as picking up a pebble

“Oi, Ana?” He said, his voice calm and dark. “Y’think ye can pilot Titan better’n Miya?”

“C-Course I can’t, I don’t have Tempest,” he yelped, reaching back and grabbing Wasseim by the arm to try to alleviate the pressure on his shoulder.

“Y’got a problem with yer CO’s disciplinary actions?” He asked.

Analu was quiet for a moment before he shook his head, his squirming taking on a greater intensity as Wasseim continued to pressure his shoulder.

“Then mebbe shut yer mouth ‘n leave Nazmiya ‘t me, ye?” Wasseim didn’t wait for a response and let Analu go, casting a challenging glance around the room which wasn’t met by a single pair of eyes except Miya’s. “An’ Miya. These new security ‘cols are more fer you than the rest’ve us. Hallucia finds out yer the only pilot for Titan, ‘s a big target on yer back. Show some respect.”

“Of course, Uncle. I will contemplate Tempest’s blessing later.” Naz smiled at him. Wasseim’s shoulders slumped again and he shook his head.

“Could barely handle one niece,” He muttered, going back to his briefing.

***

Dawn watched the van through the corner of their eye, making sure not to make it too obvious that they were aware of the amateurs’ presence. Dawn wasn’t fully aware of all the aspects of this operation. They didn’t need to know, so they hadn’t been told. Even if they had been fully briefed, it wasn’t Dawn’s place to question the necessity of their role, and so they didn’t. Still, that didn’t mean that Dawn was particularly fond of this phase of the operation. This was the part where they sat out here in plain sight while some mercenaries hired by a deranged zealot watched with guns readied.

Dawn lowered their spoon to their bowl of soup and brought some up to their lips, maintaining a picture of patience and boredom for the people who were probably watching them through binoculars. Unlike Neo-Venus, Abrandia did use a market-based exchange system for many things, but food and housing weren’t included in that system. Dawn’s room and meals in this hostel would be provided for them without question for as long as they wished, which meant that they didn’t have much to do but sit around and wait for their contact give them the go-ahead to start the next phase of the mission. That, and recover properly from the beating Emilia had given them last week.

Dawn’s terminal buzzed softly against the table, the vibrations making the piece of hardware rotate a few degrees. Dawn very casually put their spoon down and checked who was calling them, suppressing how eager they were to get out in Dusk and continue their actual work instead of sitting here like a worm wriggling on a hook.

_2-11:30 Abrandia Docking Admin:_ _Hello, Mx.Dawn? Do you have a moment to clarify something for me?_

_2-11:31 Dawn:_ _Yes._

Dawn frowned a little at the message. Why would the docking administration be bothering them again? Getting past the wall of the bureaucracy here had been odious but Dawn had done everything thoroughly so as to make follow up clarifications unnecessary. There were no doubt discrepancies in the records, but Dawn had greased palms and waved distracting leads at people such that nothing would turn up foul until next quarter when they did a full audit.

_2-11:31 Abrandia Docking Admin:_ _The housing office didn’t link your profile with where you have the Mech stored. Just wanted to confirm you’re living in housing unit # 25340-T and your machine is docked at # 130-M?_

_2-11:33 Dawn:_ _No. Housing unit #25339-T and dock #112-M_

_2-11:33 Abrandia Docking Admin:_ _Oh really? Looks like we had a mix-up after all. Thanks for clarifying! Have a nice stay in Abrandia, Mx._

Dawn stared at the messages for a while, frowning and unable to shake the feeling that something was wrong. The message appeared to be legitimate. Dawn double-checked the source that the connection had come from, it was the same people who had given Dawn the permissions to house Dusk in the facility it was still occupying. Paranoia crept across Dawn’s uneasy mind but there was nothing to be done about it. Dawn’s instructions were to be completely co-operative with the local government and to sit still and await further instructions. And so, that’s just what they did.

**

_2-11:50 Butterfly:_ _Hey, Miss Nina, guess who I found?_

  
  


_2-12:12 NinaS:_ _Just say it not in mood_

  
  


_2-12:15 Butterfly:_ _Dawn’s in town. I found where they’re staying._

  
  


_2-12:15 NinaS:_ _On my way msg me details_

_2-12:17 Butterfly:_ _Housing unit #25339-T and the Mech is in dock #112-M_

_2-12:20 NinaS:_ _112m? Heck ya ty Butterfly talk later_

Dawn’s accommodations were a little hostel tucked away near the industrial district of Abrandia, no doubt chosen for proximity to wherever it was the pilot’s Mech was docked than anything else. As luck would have it, she found them in the little common area porch, easily identifying them at a glance.

The Ascension that ExSol’s called Zenith steadily increased up the internal body temperature of the person who was activating it. Unlike Pulse, it could be freely activated and deactivated, but provided no thrilling rush, no heady moments of hyper-awareness. The cockpit of a Zenith Mech, by necessity, had refrigeration and heat sinking capabilities to stop the pilot from getting heatstroke. Some small percentage of people who both had and actively used Zenith had their hair burned off, typically people with fine, blonde hair that was susceptible to the increased temperature. Dawn was one of those people, bald and pale without even a single eyelash or eyebrow. 

Nina approached Dawn’s table with the plate of food she’d acquired from a nearby restaurant. She dropped her plate onto the table and it landed with a rattle of recyclable cutlery. She watched the androgynous pilot for a few moments, hoping to get some bluster out of them but instead they simply looked up at her curiously and with a sense of impenetrable calm. 

“This one would be pleased to be of assistance with or without the theatrics, miss.” Their voice was soft and had a smooth flow to it that seemed practiced to the point of being unnatural. Like the pilot themselves, it had a genderlessness to it that had to be intentional.

“This one? You talking ‘bout you? Mebbe ya got some robot who’s watching and yer… narratin’ on your… uhh…” She trailed off as the logic of her own snarky comment got away from her. The pilot remained as unperturbed at her failed attempt at a joke as they had at her intrusion.

“Dawn is this one’s name, and they are the only one you are speaking to, though the reason for your accostation remains a point of interest.” Dawn offered a clarification, acting like the way they were speaking and Nina’s comment were both perfectly normal. Nina scowled at their demeanour, wondering if they were outright batty or just trying to mock her. Well, if it was a ribbing she was getting, then she’d figured that she deserved it for ruining her joke.

“I saw you. That machine of yers, out by that big ‘ol Talon fortress. You were pokin’ around some place you shouldn’ta been, actin’ like you knew you shouldn’ta been there.” She cut to the point. Her attempt at levity had failed and it wasn’t her strong point anyway.

“Dawn is not currently accepting contracts, Miss, nor will they for the duration of their stay upon this planet.” They looked down at their hand terminal and flicked a finger across it, the electronic sounds of a video game responding to the motion.

“Nah. You don’ get it. Yer breakin that fortress out of a behavior pattern. My boss thinks I did it, he’s firin’ me over it. Yer also breakin’ local law but I don’ care quite so much ‘bout that one.”

Dawn was quiet for a few moments, and finally they looked up at her slowly, an unreadable look in their eyes, but one that was unmistakably different from the poker face they’d been wearing. “Dawn does regret causing you harm, Miss, but there is little this one can do to atone for that harm.”

“That’s where yer wrong,” Nina huffed a little at the non-apology, and pulled out the data drive that she’d made on her way to visit the Neo-Venutian. She placed it on the table, then took out a Zenith encoder and hooked the two devices up. “This is yer Mech’s nav data. I need you to decrypt it for me so I can prove to my boss that yer not some stupid-named ghost. Ya also need me to remove the docking clamp I put on that stupid-lookin’ Mech of yers.” Breaking into the hangar where Dusk was stored had been tricky but not impossible. Dawn had chosen their hangar for discretion, something out of the way. It hadn’t been graced with the most iron-clad security Abrandia had to offer. The particular dock that housed Dusk had especially compromised security, though the docking administration had yet to realize it.

Dawn’s eyes went wide, and they stared at the little drive, going pale, if that were even possible considering how pale they already were. “You… went into Dusk’s hangar?”

“Piking right I did,” Nina smirked at the flabbergasted androgyn, reveling in her victory a little.

Dawn dived for the drive, trying to snatch it off the table, but Nina was too fast. She grabbed it before they could and moved it out of reach. Nina expected Dawn to beg a little, or try to grab it again, but instead they actually looked _past_ Nina. Without a word of explanation, they pulled a hand-held Plasma caster out of… somewhere and extended their arm. Nina swore and reacted, both ducking down and kicking her chair backwards. The motion sent the flimsy plastic chair tumbling to the ground and she winced in pain as the air was forced out of her lungs. The weapon discharged with a hissing noise as a magnetically contained bubble of plasma streaked through the air towards its target, which apparently wasn’t Nina. 

A van had been driving up the street towards them and Dawn had fired straight through the windshield. A sliding door on the side of the vehicle was thrown open and someone who was definitely a mercenary tumbled out holding an assault rifle. The Van itself crashed into a nearby building and crumpled a little, but not enough to do more than rattle the other passengers who hadn’t dived out. Nina bolted to her feet, taking a step back and looking over at Dawn who had aimed the weapon at her now. 

There was a moment of silence as Dawn hesitated, and then winced and lowered the weapon. “They think you are Dawn’s contact. They will kill you.”

Nina looked over her shoulder, the mercenary who’d fallen out first was rising to his feet and two more were wobbling out of the ruined van. She didn’t take long to make up her mind, especially when one of them pointed at her and raised her weapon.

“Bereaver’s tits, go!” She pocketed the encrypted navigation data, and ran, following on Dawn’s heels. The two of them bolted off the balcony and around the corner as the goons’ rifles roared behind them. There was a soft whine as several bullets but into the wood and ceramic around them as they turned the corner. Nina suspected that the only reason they hadn’t been cut down in that initial volley was that the mercenaries were probably very disoriented from their crash.

“Dawn does not know the layout of this city,” They hissed softly at Nina as the two ran into the alley. Dawn turned around only for an instant to fire off a shot from their plasma caster. The weapon probably _was_ a single-shot design optimized for taking out small robots and vehicles, and it would certainly struggle to deal with five goons armed with automatic rifles. Still, superheated plasma flying at a person was definitely enough to make one think twice.

“There’s some smugglin’ tunnels a few blocks away. We kin lose the goons in there.” Nina double checked their surroundings to make sure they were where she thought they were. “Can that thing of yers slag a welded plate open, actually?”

“Dawn will be very disappointed if it cannot,” they muttered, following behind Nina as the two of them dashed through the alleyways of Abrandia into the industrial district, even as city-wide alarms began to blare in response to the unauthorized small arms fire. Nina’s atheleticism allowed her to outpace Dawn to the next cover point almost immediately, and she turned around a little bit confused, seeing that Dawn was limping a little bit and struggling to move quickly.

Rifles popped and bullets whined as they impacted with the steel walls around the two of them as the mercenaries came into line of sight. Nina cursed and ducked instinctively, and she heard Dawn fire the plasma caster even as she scrambled around the edge of the warehouse they were next to in order to break the shooters’ line of sight. Dawn scrambled around the corner a moment later, and Nina muttered to herself as she looked around for the right building.

“There. That building,” She looked over at Dawn to make sure they were paying attention and froze for a moment. Dawn’s tidy, minimalistic white shirt and pants were soaking through with blood. Two bullets had struck Dawn in the leg, and another in their side. They were panting and groaning softly, the plasma caster hanging limply in their grip at their side. Nina stared at them for a few moments, feeling a cold chill settle over her.

She _should_ leave them behind, let the Abrandia militia or the hit squad pick them up. She’d get away easily, and the worst she’d have to deal with would be Sam firing her, but Dawn’s death would possibly serve as proof of their interference anyway. She would never have resorted to killing the strange pilot to resolve her issue with Sam, not on her own. But this… all she had to do was run away and save herself.

“...Heck…” she muttered.

With one swift motion, Nina surged forward, using her superior strength and height to sweep the bleeding, weakened stranger off their feet and into her arms. Dawn put up no resistance, they just moaned softly in pain as she did. Warm blood soaked through Dawn’s clothes into Nina’s and she clutched them close as she bolted for the warehouse with the tunnel entrance.

“Ay, stay with me, enby,” Nina jostled Dawn gently when they went a little bit limp in her grasp. The plasma caster Dawn was still clutching in a death grip was probably Ascension-coded and Nina wouldn’t be able to fire it herself.

More alarms blared, announcing the arrival of the Abrandia militia. The sound filled Nina with both dread and relief. The militia showing up meant that their assailants would probably call off the chase, especially since they’d actually hit Dawn three times. It also meant that Nina had another group to avoid, since the militia catching her with a half-dead offworlder would definitely be a violation of her parole, even if this specific scenario wasn’t written into the agreement.

“Hey, hey, wakey wakey. Need ya to melt off this panel.” Nina shook Dawn again, directing their head towards the loading dock hatch that had been bolted shut since last year. Dawn looked at it sluggishly for several moments before they weakly raised their arm, pointing the plasma caster at the panel holding the dock shut. Nina quickly took a few steps back to create some distance, and Dawn fired, the superheated matter burning a hole through the panel. It wasn’t totally free, but it was close enough for Nina to give it a strong kick to break off the melted bits of steel still holding it shut. She pushed up the sliding door with one arm enough to duck under it, and let it slam closed behind her.

“...No… Hospital…” Dawn croaked weakly, tugging on Nina’s jacket and getting their bloody fingerprints all over it.

“No jokin’” Nina agreed grimly, finding an empty workbench in the dim light and setting Dawn down upon it. “They’d have questions neither one’a us wants to sit for.” Dawn nodded and groaned softly as Nina pulled out a multitool and used it to poke a hole in Dawn’s shirt. A few quick rips tore Dawn’s shirt off, revealing a compression undershirt beneath that was similarly stained red. It was actually keeping enough pressure on the wound in Dawn’s side that it wasn’t bleeding as profusely as it could have, and was quite possibly the reason they were still conscious. Nina ripped a few strips of cloth out of the shirt and used it to wrap and bind the bullet holes in Dawn’s leg just to slow the bleeding down. She gingerly tied another around the through-and-through in Dawn’s side even as they gasped in pain and squirmed on the surface of the bench.

“D-Dawn knows the young miss did not have to save them...” they breathed weakly as Nina finished applying the bandages and tossed the spare bits of blood-soaked cloth into a corner.

“Hrmph. S’fine. I need ya, after all.” Nina grumbled, and started looking around for the hatch that led into the tunnels beneath the industrial district. Her mind raced with ideas and possibilities of what she needed to do next. Keeping Dawn alive at all would be difficult and time-sensitive. She could try to find some unlicensed surgeon in the Abrandian underground but she had no more contacts there, she couldn’t pay them, and she probably couldn’t trust them, either. They had medical equipment back at Nina’s camp and Sam had enough medical background to treat bullet wounds, but getting there was the problem. She couldn’t exactly drive her bike through the checkpoint with a dying, bleeding person on the back, especially with the administrative lockdown that was sure to come.

“Yo, weirdo, do you think you could pilot that Mech of yers if I get ya to it?” she asked after she pried the rusty hatch open.

Dawn looked over at her from the work bench and blinked a few times, processing her question before answering. “Yes… Dusk has an auto-medic installed in the cockpit that could staunch the flow of Dawn’s blood. This one would not be combat ready but that should not be necessary.”

“An’ it’s stealth, right? It can slip past the checkpoint?” She went over to them and lifted them up, cradling them a little more gently in her arms this time and heading over to the hatch. It was dark inside the warehouse but it was darker still down the steep stairs into the tunnel.

“The authorities may notice Dusk’s passing, but should have difficulty giving pursuit.” Dawn exhaled softly, relaxing a little in Nina’s arms without going limp like they had before.

Nina grunted in response and turned on the light on her hand terminal to navigate her way through the dark, damp tunnels. She re-traced her steps fairly easily, having taken a similar route through a different entrance earlier that day. She arrived at another hatch that she’d apparently forgotten to close properly, and she easily shoved it open without having to put Dawn down. The hangar was empty of people, but the compact Mech, Dusk, took up the entire far wall. Dusk was about eight meters tall, standing a bit higher than Twinshya even though Twinshya was probably twice the size. It was humanoid like most ExSol-crafted Ascension Mechs, but somehow managed to be alien and foreign at the same time.

Every human-made Mech Nina had ever seen out of Abrandia had square, blocky frames with heavy armor plates and modular parts and weapon systems connected to the torso. Dusk was sleek, slender, and its weapon systems looked almost like strange, oversized growths emerging naturally from the humanoid frame. Dusk had no pieces that looked like a head attached directly to the torso, but the missile rack on the left shoulder looked almost like one that was just far too uncentered. The vibroblade was grafted onto the ‘elbow’ of the right arm and it extended far past the hand. It would have touched the ground if the limb was positioned differently. It was clearly able to pivot around it to get different cutting angles with a design Nina could barely even comprehend. The plasma caster on the left arm was the heaviest one she’d ever seen on a Mech that size and she wasn’t sure how its power grid could possibly supply it properly.

Nina helped dawn climb into the cockpit situated in the center of the Mech’s torso and stepped back as the hatch closed and auto-medic started to work. A short while later, the Mech’s external speakers came on as the machine powered up. “Thank you, Miss. There is a cargo compartment located upon Dusk’s back that you can ride in. This one regrets to say that the ride will be somewhat frigid, Dawn’s Zenith burns hotter than most and Dusk must cool itself to compensate.”

“Figures,” Nina muttered as she went over to the hangar’s control console and logged in with the dummy administrative account she’d hacked together earlier that day. She released the docking clamps on Dusk’s legs and the Mech stood up to its full height. It walked away from the dock’s far wall and then kneeled down, the aforementioned cargo hatch popping open for her. She groaned again when she saw that she would basically be riding in a trunk, and then, resigned to her fate, climbed in.

***

Dawn enabled Dusk’s stealth field immediately, even before the hangar door opened. Doing so was a tad risky, the Mech’s reactor couldn’t function at full capacity unless Dawn flared their Zenith harder, so they’d have to burn into the battery reserves to use functions like the stealth field. Firing their Ascension that hard would probably freeze the strange girl to death when Dusk’s cooling system compensated, though. Much as Dawn was prepared to let her die to finish the mission, it would be easier to get medical care from her colleagues if she was alive. Plus… it would be a burden on Dawn’s conscience that they didn’t much want.

Dusk slipped silently through the streets of Abrandia’s industrial district towards the city limits. With the stealth field on, they were almost completely invisible to radar scanners and only a human staring very intently looking for a strange shimmer in the air would be able to notice its presence. Several Abrandian militia patrols were moving around, questioning people and searching for the source of the disturbance. Dawn had no indication that they’d caught the assassins who had come for them, but they’d still detain and question Dawn if they found out they were the target. That kind of set back would keep Dawn impounded for weeks or months, and that was time they didn’t have. They moved swiftly but carefully towards the wall, avoiding groups of people and keeping enough distance so that people wouldn’t hear Dusk’s footsteps through the sound dampener or notice the telltale shimmer as it moved. Eventually, someone would notice the Mech’s movements. One could not move an eight-meter tall machine through a city without someone noticing.

Several people did seem to notice, turning and looking and squinting at Dusk as Dawn approached the wall. Perhaps the level of cultural awareness around the stealth technology was a factor that Dawn didn’t account for. On Neo-Venus, a security officer seeing a strange stealth shimmer would immediately sound the alarm, but these people just shook their heads and went back to what they were doing. It was when Dawn approached the city perimeter that Dusk’s stealth display lit up, confirming that an X-ray scanner had penetrated the stealth field. Fortunately, at this point, it was too late.

Dawn dropped the stealth field and activated the gravity manipulation to launch the mech up into the air and over the wall. Target locks started to resolve, and connection requests streamed in so rapidly that Dawn would have been overwhelmed with how to try to respond coherently even if they were so inclined. Dawn was ready to engage Dusk’s anti-missile capabilities, but there must have been a good amount bureaucratic confusion within the Militia’s ranks because no missiles came.

Dusk hit the ground running, subtly pulling itself forward with the gravity manipulators to improve its ground speed. The big lumbering Tempest Mech, Titan, was too far away to lock on with its Disintegration Beam, and Dawn had only to re-activate their stealth field once they were far enough away to render most other weapons ineffectual. Autocannon and plasma caster fire came from stationary emplacements around the city, peppering the ground around Dusk and testing the limits of its deflectors. Dusk’s power reserves dipped down to 30% and Dawn flared on their Zenith a little bit to alleviate the power drain. From within Dusk, Dawn heard the crass young woman curse and yell a little bit as the Mech’s heat sinks kicked themselves up a notch to compensate for Dawn’s increased body temperature.

Abrandia’s military was purely defensive, and was ill-equipped to deal with a fleeing stealth Mech, so the pursuit dropped off almost immediately. Dawn took their machine up into the hills towards the Talon fortress and dropped the stealth field, lowering the Mech’s power drain to essential systems only.

“Sounds like we’re clear,” The crass young woman’s muffled voice came from within the storage compartment.

“Dawn…” Dawn wanted to say something in return, but a jolt of pain ripped through them as they spoke. They flipped over to the auto-medic readout and saw that their blood pressure was still dropping well below what it should be. Instead, they simply typed ‘Yes’ into a text-to-speech engine and let the robotic voice ring throughout the Mech’s interior as an answer.

By the time Dusk walked up to the edge of the wrecked observatory that was the crass young woman’s camp, Dawn could feel themselves fading. Power reserves were at 8% simply because Dawn had not fired back on their Zenith for the crass young woman’s safety, and a horrifically outdated and patchwork Pulse Mech was approaching them along with a connection request. Rather than try to speak, Dawn simply lowered Dusk to its knees, powered it down, unlocked the storage compartment housing the crass young woman, and allowed themselves to slip from consciousness.


	3. Chapter 3

Himiko Yamane drummed her fingers on her desk as the two people she’d called into her office got settled and did one quick check through the files in their respective hand terminals. Wasseim was a tall, lanky man with thinning yet greasy hair. He was, in some capacity, in charge of the Abrandia militia. Shayala was Abrandia’s foreign minister and had been occupying that position for decades, far before Himiko had even been working for the government, let alone running it.

“Knight-Major,” Himiko looked at Wasseim and addressed him by his title to indicate that he could speak.

“Ye. We rounded up two of the gunners. Caught ‘em trying to flee the district on foot. Didn’t get far with their vehicle in the state it was. I saw the interro myself, both of ‘em flipped pretty fast. Either they’re ace black ops feedin’ us a story, or just some local badgers willin’ to hoist a slug thrower for a clip.” Wasseim rambled on about the incident with a goofy grin on his face like he was talking about a party he’d just come from.

“Do we have any leads on who hired them?” Himiko asked, keeping the Knight-Major fixated with a cool gaze to keep his leash taut.

“Ye. Looks like it was one of the ‘davers in the vehicle. She and it, they look like they got fragged with a heckin  _ caster  _ of all things. Not tot’ sure how that happened. We runnin’ tests on the scoring.” Wasseim snickered at that a little and Himiko’s frown did little to dissuade his attitude.

She nodded to him even as she took a few quiet moments to puzzle the meaning out of his stupid slang. It was a source of eternal frustration that part of her job seemed to be teaching government officials to not talk like teenagers, but now was not the time to derail the meeting. “And what were they supposedly hired to do?”

“Crack some Zenith-head and swipe their terminal. They were pretty foggy on the details. Gonna squeeze ‘em harder for those. I’ll have more details as soon as I can, GovGen.” Wasseim winked at her and Himiko scowled at the abhorrent truncation of her title.

“Do you have any information on this transient, Minister?” Himiko turned away from the socially oblivious Wasseim and addressed Shayala.

“Do I ever.” Shayala sighed, sifting through some files on her terminal. She flicked an image onto one of the displays in Himiko’s office and it lit up with an image of what appeared to be an official-looking piece of identification. “Transient’s name is Dawn, they rode in on a Mech that they registered as Dusk. I know, I know, I checked to see if it was an alias. I interviewed the customs agent that registered this pilot and they said that this had no means of verifying whether or not the identification was legitimate but the Mech’s navigation log did confirm that it was from Neo-Venus. I’ve gotten confirmation that the navigation logs don’t  _ look _ forged but we’re going to keep running tests.”

“How can we possibly not have any idea whether or not this is legitimate?” Himiko asked, studying the picture that Shayala had thrown onto the screen.

“Neo-Venus is anywhere between four to ten trips gate-to-gate. We’ve literally never had official contact with what passes for government over there, just rumours and stories. I dug through records and couldn’t find a single thing to compare this identification to.”

“So…” Himiko said, scowling at the two of them. “Do either of you have an idea how this person fled the city in this Mech of theirs?”

“Stealth field,” Wasseim explained, leaning back in his chair. “Techs are combing over the sensor data. Sounds like this Mech out-gleams everything but Titan. Even then, might be close.”

“And why exactly did we let a military-grade stealth Mech into the city completely unsupervised?” Himiko asked.

“Someone either slothed out, hecked up, or took a coin.” Wasseim answered cheerfully, much to the displeasure of both women.

“Customs agents not doing their jobs should be a great concern to us all and not a joke, Knight-Captain,” Shayala looked over at him, accusing him no doubt in the hopes that none of this failure would blow back onto her.

“Ay, not sayin’ its not a concern, Shay. Full hardware audits of every machine that comes through ‘ere aint ‘xactly easy as pettin’ a fox. Can’t expect underpaid customs shrews to do counter-intel work for us.” As Wasseim spoke, his hand terminal chimed softly and he looked down at it. “Oho. Facial recognition came back with the woman helpin’ the Zenith-head. Nina Sahara, juv del, former Smithson Cartel, Pulse Ascension, on parole, works outside the city somewhere.”

“Can you bring her in?” Himiko asked.

“Parole docs usually don’t cover espionage, but ye, if I can find her I’ll get her. See what she knows. Sounds like maybe she works for one of the scavvers out there. I’ll ask around.” Wasseim spoke with a little more focus as he looked through the accomplice’s file. He sent the file to Himiko and Shayala a moment later, and then stood up.

Himiko waved to him to indicate that he could go and Wasseim gave a quick salute before he took off, already talking to someone through his terminal before he was even outside of the office. 

“I want to know what this pilot is doing here and who sent them, Minister,” Himiko addressed Shayala icily.

“I’ve got a few meetings planned. Someone in my network of contacts knows someone from Neo-Venus. As far as who tried to have them killed, well, I’ve got a short list and it only has one name on it.”

“Hallucia, I assume?”

“Of course. The fact that there’s no hardware audit of this machine is probably why they were so interested, too.” Shayala sighed and shook her head, looking annoyed. “This Mech comes in, no hardware audit, almost no document trail, looks like a ghost to them. They probably thought  _ we  _ were the ones trying to keep it quiet. No surprise they’d look into it and consider taking out the pilot so we can’t use it.”   
  
“And the connection to this Sahara girl?” Himiko asked, sharing in Shayala’s displeasure.

“Wrong place wrong time? Hired help? Neo-Venutian asset? Could just as easily be any of those. We’ll have to scoop her up to get a better guess. As far as grabbing this operative, all three of the Gate outposts on the continent have been alerted to watch for them and I’m talking to the Hallucian government to ask for their passage logs around their Gate but I doubt they’ll co-operate. I’m sorry Governor General, but the truth is that If this operative wants to get off-world then they may already be far beyond our reach.”

“I figured. Something about this incident doesn’t sit right with me. I want people in custody and I want them talking.” Himiko gave Shayala a look every bit as frigid as the one she’d given Wasseim. She wanted the Minister to know that she wanted results, not another political maneuver to pin blame on the militia. “You’re dismissed. I want an update as soon as you have it, Shayala.”

“Of course, Governor General.”

***

Nina unstrapped herself from the frigid storage locker and hopped down to the ground with a less-than-graceful plummet that almost ended with her laying flat on her face. She stumbled to her knees instead, shivering with stiff muscles. She heard a familiar soft whirring noise not far ahead of her, and she looked up to see Twinshya glowing red and aiming its gauss cannon at Dusk warily. Nina scrambled to her feet and waved her arms, trying to get Carrina’s attention before she shot the defenseless Mech out of paranoia.

“Nina? Mercy, what’s going on?” Carrina’s voice came through her hand terminal unbidden, using her administrative override.

“S’alright, no hostile. Pilot’s hurt, gonna take ‘em to the auto-doc.” She looked back at Dusk and saw the cockpit door had opened. Dawn was inside and unconsciously slumped in their seat as the Mech’s auto-medic fussed with their body, doing what it was capable of.

“I’m gonna need a better explanation than that,” Nina could hear the bitchy scowl on Carrina’s face but she paid it no heed as she climbed up to the cockpit and unstrapped Dawn’s unconscious form.

“When nobody’s dyin’ I’ll spew what li’l I know.” Nina replied as she awkwardly climbed back down and started walking briskly past Twinshya even as the Mech loomed ominously overhead.

“Fine. Meet you there.” Carrina relented right before she Counter-Pulsed and Twinshya shifted into defense mode, red glow fading down to the cool reflective black of the Mech’s usual colouring.

Nina carried Dawn through their compound to the medical center and laid them down on the padded surface for the auto-doc. The machine hummed to life and Nina barked some voice commands at it. “Slug wounds. Blood loss.” Still, the machine cut away some of Dawn’s clothes and connected a few sensors to run tests and quickly verify Nina’s assertion. When that was done it inserted a few needles and started pumping Dawn full of synthetic replacement blood and started to bind and mend the tissue damage. A few minutes later, it beeped at her and informed her that the patient’s chances were good, and Nina sighed in relief. Immediately after that, it started registering other injuries, a few scrapes, cuts, and extensive partially-healed bruising around their groin that explained why they’d been limping. Nina felt bad that she’d treated Dawn the way she had as the monitor registered the extent of the bruising. They’d clearly undergone something traumatic to leave bruising like that. 

Sam entered the room not long after, a confused expression oh his face that was looking for an excuse to morph into rage and indignation. “Who the heck is this and why is there a weird Mech parked just outside my facility and… Why.”

“Long tale. Gon’ wait till ‘rina gets here to tell it.” Nina answered and tried not to smirk. Truthfully she really didn't care about re-telling the story she just wanted a plausible excuse to make Sam squirm.

Carrina didn’t keep the two of them waiting long, she walked through the doors a few minutes later after presumably docking Twinshya on the other side of the facility and walking over to the medical center. “So, this is… Dawn?” Carrina asked.

“You are  _ not _ trying to tell me that this story about a Neo-Venutian Zenith pilot is actually real. I am not–” Sam tried to bluster a little bit, but he looked at Dawn again, and trailed off.

“I found it a little hard to believe too, Sam, but that Mech out there is the real deal and this person is clearly a Zenith pilot.” Carrina walked over to the auto-doc display and checked it for herself to see the machine’s estimation of whether or not Dawn would survive.

“Ye. Butterfly found ‘em sittin’ at a place in Abrandia and I went to gift a visit. Some goons showed up, tried to crack the both of us. Check the news feeds if you want proof.” Nina stood up, utilizing her height and physical form to push a bit of intimidation. She had her vindication, she intended to use it.

“So they’ve been harassing the Talon fortress, then?” Carrina asked, a kind of half-grimace on her face as she acknowledged Nina’s accounting of Dawn’s actions as truth.

“Ye. Can’t say why. Gon’ ask though.” Nina watched Sam closely as she spoke, so closely that there was no way he didn’t notice. She wanted him to squirm a little, wanted him to feel bad for how he’d been treating her lately.

“We’ll review your probation, if this pans out,” Sam muttered, looking away. He walked up to the auto-doc and cycled through a few diagnostics and menus. A short while later, Dawn groaned and opened their eyes.

“Is it really necessary to wake them up so soon?” Carrina asked, sounding a little mortified that Sam had gone and stimmed them awake.

“It’s safe,” Sam replied, answering the unspoken question and leaving the spoken one implied.

“Patient requests painkiller,” Dawn’s voice sounded groggy yet somehow still aware and disciplined. Nina was about to admonish Sam for denying Dawn’s request, but to her surprise the machine beeped in acknowledgement and a needle shot into their arm before he could. Nina wasn’t familiar with the administrative functions on the auto-doc but apparently Dawn knew what requests from the patient the machine would respond do. Then again, maybe that was just a feverish guess on their part.

“You wanna tell us what in the worlds is going on?” Sam demanded of Dawn angrily even as Dawn sighed softly, the painkiller no doubt having some effect already.

“This one has been under observation by the ones who sent those shooters, Dawn believes their true goal was this one’s contact within Abrandia. When the young miss was seen leaving Dawn’s hangar and then meeting with them, they believed her to be their target.” Dawn spoke in a measured voice that recaptured some of their earlier calmness and inscrutability.

“Who do you work for? Who was coming after you?” Carrina pressed.

“Much as this one is imminently grateful for your assistance, they are not authorized to explain their mission.” Dawn exhaled tiredly and closed their eyes again, but didn’t quite fall back asleep. No doubt that would actually be impossible so long as the auto-doc was gently stimming them.

“Care to tell ‘rina and Sam what you’ve been up to in that fancy Mech o’ yers?” Nina asked.

“Dawn has been engaging in military action against Talon,” They replied. Nina was a little surprised that they admitted it so readily. “This one has been tasked with retrieving a specific piece of technology from the large facility here on Ishtar.”

“And of course you can’t tell us what you’re trying to retrieve,” Sam grumbled, crossing his arms and scowling.

“No. But Dawn is willing to offer recompense for their prior transgressions, their host’s current acts of altruism, and perhaps future cooperation.”

“Generous of ya to only offer not to squeeze us after I drag yer body through a tunnel,” Nina rolled her eyes.

“This one would argue that their situation would be far less dire had the young miss not interfered in the first place. Regardless, fate and circumstances flow as water. Dawn does not provide or request justifications, Dawn accepts that they are adrift. A chance to rest  _ would _ be appreciated, however…” Dawn’s voice grew weak and exhausted even as they waxed poetic.

“Sounds settled. Let the poor enby rest,” Carrina shot Nina and Sam a concerned frown and went to the auto-doc and changed a setting to stop it from stimming Dawn to keep them awake. With a soft groan, they closed their eyes and their breathing fell back into a steady rhythm.

“This is a total disaster. We should just thank Agrianna that nobody got hurt and call the governor to let her sort this out.” Carrina looked over at the two of them once she’d made sure that Dawn was unconscious.

“What? Screw that. Himiko will just arrest this weirdo, Talon’s pattern will break and we’ll get screwed over. If they can’t pay us directly, then Twinshya and that other Mech can bust up some camp, they can have whatever bauble they want and we can cash in on the rest. We call Himiko and we get nothing. Hell, she might even just throw obstruction charges at us if she’s in a bad mood.” Nina winced as Sam ranted. Mostly because she actually agreed with him and she hated it when that happened.

“That Mech is the gleam of the gates, boss. It can help us hit targets that Twinshya never could. Mebbe we can round up some scrap and I can actually replace autocannons five ‘n six. Could get the conduit to fix the deflectors ‘fore some stray round wiggles through em and turns normal Carrina into Car and Rina.”

Carrina scowled at the two of them, clearly not fond of their input. “We’ll talk about it.” She finally conceded with a look at Sam which meant that the two would argue about it once Nina was out of the room. Nina was happy to indulge her bosses in their desire to be rid of her and she slipped out of the room before they could think of any other topics to raise with her.

***

Talon didn’t think, it evaluated. It analyzed positions, obstacles, resources, and assets. It itemized various courses of action and sent them off to the Administrator so that the Administrator could guide its actions. No response came from the Administrator. No response had come in a very long time.

This didn’t affect Talon’s functions at all. Talon was designed to assist the Administrator. There was no contingency to be followed in the case of the Administrator’s extended absence. Instead, Talon chose a course of actions from its list, one not too risky or aggressive, and then it continued to evaluate.

And as it analyzed, it detected a pattern.

An assailant from <Null> had struck several outposts in succession upon world 3-205023. The possibility that the assailant was seeking Talon’s Gate codes had just exceeded 13.2%. A parameter changed. Priorities changed. Talon began to mobilize its forces upon 3-205023. Gate code theft was against the treatise. Protection of Gate codes was a high priority directive in the absence of Administrator commands.

Talon began to hunt for <Null> assailant with increased priorities.

***

Naz traced her fingers along the outline of Marielle’s collarbone. The older woman continued to pay her no heed, her fingers tapping steadily on a keypad and eyes fixated upon the diagnostic screen in front of her. She decided to escalate a little, leaning forward on Marielle’s shoulder and running her fingers along the side of her lover’s neck.

“Naz, I know– aaah!” Marielle squeaked a little as Naz dragged the finely kept nails of her left hand a little more firmly against Marielle’s tender skin. She wished that she was able to have  _ all _ of her nails like that, but the compromise she’d arrived at with Miya was that she made aesthetic decisions about the left hand and Miya got the right.

“Do any know?” Naz asked, smiling softly as Marielle squirmed a little and finally tore her gaze away from her work.

“Yes, sweetie, ‘any’ does know that you want my attention.” Marielle looked over at her with a coy smile and deliberately interlocked the fingers of her biological hand with Naz’ so that she couldn’t prod or tickle her. She raised an eyebrow at Naz, inviting her to elaborate on her cryptic comment in spite of the sarcastic answer Marielle had given.

“Only guessing… belief…” Naz grinned, leaning in and kissing Marielle on the cheek. “You believe my desire…?”

Marielle snorted out a soft laugh. “I  _ know  _ you want attention, kit.” She reached up, threading her mechanical fingers through Naz’ fine hair and scratching at her scalp until Naz hummed softly and closed her eyes. Marielle used her complacent state to gently dislodge Naz and set her down on the seat next to Marielle’s desk that wasn’t her own. When Naz opened her eyes, Marielle was sitting back down at her desk, glancing back at her screen.

“And as much as I’d love to blow off work and pay attention to you, I’ve got a deadline to meet.” Marielle gave Naz a sad smile and went back to tapping away at her keypad.

Naz decided to leave her alone, and went into her own hand terminal to pull up some vocal exercises. Before long, the rhythmic sound of Marielle tapping on her keypad was drowned out by the accompanying music coming out of Naz’ hand terminal and her singing and following the instructions of the vocal drills. When she and Miya were alone, she often sang softly and tried to follow along with the melody of Tempest surging inside of her, but she felt like she could not do it justice. If human beings could sense and interpret Tempest as music, then she figured there must be a reason for it. She accepted and embraced the reality that no matter how deeply she believed, she may never advance either her or the ExSol’s understanding of Tempest by even a little. But even accepting that, she believed there was more to understand, and perhaps knowing more about music would play some small part.

“Naz, sweetie?” Marielle raised her voice to get Naz’ attention, and she looked over at Marielle, realizing that she’d been lost in thought.

“...Yes?”

“Your terminal is beeping, kit.” Marielle smiled at her and gestured towards the little piece of technology sitting in Naz’ lap. Sure to her comment, the music and voice drills had stopped, interrupted by the repetitive beeping of an incoming connection request. Naz stared at it for a few seconds before Miya’s exasperation rose to the surface and she answered the call.

“Yeah?” Miya asked.

“Ay, Miya.” Wasseim greeted her, recognizing Miya by tone alone. “Y’secure?”

“Mari’s here,” Miya responded, glancing up at Naz’ girlfriend who was pointedly ignoring her.

“Hey, Marielle, what’s yer clearance level again?” Wasseim asked, raising his voice a little.

“Ninety four, I think?” Marielle answered absently. “I’m not really listening anyway, I’m busy.”

“Ugh. close ‘nuff,” Wasseim sighed impatiently. Miya scowled at that comment. He was the one always lecturing her about security protocols, after all. “GovGen wants us to brief ‘bout a long-range mission fer ya. Come ‘round office four, prep the manifests ye’d need.” It wasn’t really a question and he didn’t phrase it like one.

“Inbound, Uncle,” Naz replied cheerfully, closing the connection. She went over to kiss Marielle on the cheek, earning a smile and an affectionate hand-squeeze from her partner before Marielle went back to her work.

Office four, as it was called, wasn’t terribly far from Marielle’s house and workshop, so Naz opted to walk. As she made her way through the quiet streets, her terminal buzzed again with an anxiety-laden text message from her uncle asking her when she’d be arriving. She ignored it, since she was only a few minutes away anyway.

“Natalya,” Naz greeted the soldier working the door and she gave a nod of acknowledgement as she punched in the security code to admit her.

“Knight Major is in the conference room,” Natalya said, opening the door for her.

“Unseen Blessing,” Naz touched Natalya on the arm as she walked past her into the building. Someone else was posted just outside the door to the conference room, and as he spotted Naz he cracked the door opened and whispered something to the occupants. As Naz approached, he nodded at her and opened the door for her. Her uncle was inside, as Naz expected, but there was someone else inside as well.

“Captain Nazmiya,” Himiko Yamane, the Governor General and head of the Abrandian state addressed them by their combined name. She was sitting there with a cup of tea gently steaming on a coaster while her uncle stared at the large display screen that dominated the far wall. A map of the continent was on display with little information pins over various points of tactical interest.

“Unseen Blessing, Governor General,” Naz replied warmly, dipping into a curtsy that was probably not appropriate military discipline.

_ ‘It’s not. You’re supposed to salute,’  _ Miya clarified. The fact that Miya knew meant that Naz knew it too, but it was Miya’s instinct that brought that knowledge to the surface of their consciousness. Military protocol would never be instinctual for Naz.

“So,” Wasseim broke into the greeting with a cheerful smile, pretending to be oblivious to the tension in the air in an attempt to break it up. “GovGen ‘n I want you ‘n Titan to consider hittin’ a River metal refinery. We’re tryin’ to send a message t’ the Hallucians. Let ‘em know what Titan’s capable of.”

“You heard of the recent incident, I assume?” Himiko asked, shooting a cold look at Naz and completely ignoring her uncle’s diatribe.

“Heard shooting... Important?” Naz asked, remembering that there had been a bit of an uproar late yesterday. They’d been on patrol in Titan but there’d been too much confusion over the comm channels and nobody had given them specific instructions. There’d been rumours and speculation amongst the rank and file when Miya had brought the machine in to dock, but nothing consistent

  
  


“You should have been briefed on that,” Himiko scowled, shooting a look at Wasseim.

“Didn’ label ‘er ‘datory fer pilots. Naz’ in ‘er rights t’skip it.” Wasseim took a seat across from Himiko and fiddled with his hand terminal, making a few minor adjustments to the display on the wall. He played up his slang a bit, probably to provoke Himiko’s ire onto him and off of her.

“Well, this is our response,” Himiko said, shooting another distasteful look at Wasseim, taking his bait. “I want you to send a resounding message, one that undermines faith in the Hallu’s military.”

“So we’re to leave the precursors’ sad little creations as a pile of molten scrap and dust?” Miya asked, her interest piqued at the prospect of combat. She took over and straightened up her posture, letting a little grin creep onto her face.

Himiko’s brow furrowed a little at that. She was clearly uncomfortable with Nazmiya’s duality. Seeing Miya come out the way she just had had clearly perturbed her.

“S’the idea.” Wasseim confirmed, slurring together his first two words until it was almost a hiss. This time, Himiko kept scowling at Miya, not taking her uncle’s bait.

“Let us off the leash, give us permission to fully engage and we’ll get it done,” Miya grinned wider, ignoring the tension. She hated rationing ammunition and fuel rods for the reactor. Besides, she enjoyed getting under the Governor General’s skin a bit.

“We shall assess,” Naz interrupted, retaking control and settling into a more relaxed, serene posture. “Miya, correct. Untether us?”

“Ye, ye. restrictions lifted, ay GovGen?” Wasseim sent her the files containing the scouting reports on the mining operation that he wanted them to attack. The information appeared on their hand terminal and the two of them started to look through it as their uncle and Himiko exchanged looks.

Nazmiya studied the files and scouting reports intently, analyzing the outpost’s defenses and various means of defending itself and its means of calling for reinforcements. Talon was the dominant autonomous network on the planet, and its ability to reinforce facilities was far more impressive than River’s. Still, River had some significant holdings on the northern part of the continent, near the Gate controlled by the Federation of Hallucia. Reinforcements would be aerial, flying drones most likely but perhaps a medium troop carrier. Nazmiya made a point in their notes about stocking Titan’s extra stores with anti-air missiles. The two of them worked in tandem, tasks like this required their expertise and experience, not their individual personalities.

_ “Across the network…”  _ Naz mused silently. She thought of the vast network of Gates that connected the precursor’s planets to one another. The network itself spanned hundreds of worlds at least, though only two dozen had been colonized by humanity before the machines had awoken and the Bereaver had closed off the Gate to Earth. ExSol society only spanned fourteen worlds now, worlds that Himiko probably had aspirations towards.

_ “Definitely. Himiko would never be satisfied with just Abrandia. Now that she has Titan, and us, she sees what is possible.”  _ Miya didn’t share Naz’ reservations with their role in an Imperial venture in a moral sense. She didn’t care for it only because she wasn’t sure how starting armed conflicts benefitted the two of them specifically.

_ “...Perhaps… fail the mission?”  _ Naz floated the idea.

_ “We can’t. They already think we’re crazy. Unreliable. Uncontrollable. This is a tune we should dance to, Naz.” _

_ “Titan useless, without us. Only our song, sufficient.” _

_ “That only protects us so much, along with our uncle’s sentimentality. I don’t doubt that the Governor General is searching for a way to replace us with someone else. See the way she looks at us?” _

Nazmiya didn’t fight and argue over their conflicting ideas. Instead, the two trains of thought collided with one another, impressed themselves upon one another, and Naz’ will simply… took precedence. Miya grumbled slightly as she was defeated, but accepted the loss without further contestation. The two of them didn’t, and couldn’t exist or function without the ability to resolve their conflicts decisively.

Nazmiya’s Tempest fluctuated at the conclusion of the disagreement. Their hand terminal was special-made and had no magnetic parts in it, but two others on the table nearby weren’t made for someone with Nazmiya’s rare Ascension. The fluctuation created a wave of magnetism that pushed on the metal parts in the other terminals, sending them skidding across the table to clatter onto the floor. One of the lights in the room flickered slightly at the same time, and Wasseim’s chatter cut out for a second as the eyes in the room looked towards them.

“...Apologies.” Naz murmured softly.

“Anyway…” Wasseim continued, clearing his throat and grabbing Himiko’s attention away from Nazmiya. Much as people were aware that Tempest was a sporadic and inconvenient Ascension, it was still disconcerting for people when Nazmiya involuntarily threw metal objects around the room as though they were possessed.

The two of them continued to work and Wasseim and Himiko continued bickering about a few small details. They submitted a mission profile to their Uncle within minutes, omitting the request for an extra rack of anti-air missiles. It would be simple enough to over deploy the stockpile that Titan normally carried and then retreat when radar picked up incoming airborne reinforcements. The mission would be an embarrassment to Abrandia, and Miya could avoid putting the two of them in any real danger. With luck, perhaps the blame for the embarrassment would fall upon someone else, but that didn’t matter. Naz had no care for what the Governor General thought of her, and Miya only cared because it might be an inconvenience.

“...Fine, just use your judgement, Knight Major,” Himiko raised her voice a little as she stood up. She looked over at Naz one last time before leaving, a trail of frigid air seeming to linger behind her. Wasseim exhaled through his teeth as she left, and then slowly plodded over to Naz and sat down on the table next to her.

“Y’allright, Naz?” he asked.

“...Fine, Uncle.” Naz replied, putting her terminal down and looking up at him curiously.

“Still gettin’ that cough?” Even as he asked, Naz did notice a shortness of breath, a constriction in their chest. It was never completely beyond their notice, but also persistent enough that they often forgot about it.

“We are,” Naz nodded and looked up at him purposefully. The city hadn’t had access to the cystic fibrosis medication Nazmiya needed for over a month now.

“We’ll get yer meds. Chem shipment should be comin’ in soon.” Wasseim scowled a little, and shook his head. Naz knew there was very little her uncle could do to get shipments safely through the Gate network and it frustrated him much more than it frustrated her or Miya. Wasseim looked down at his terminal and tapped a few buttons in the following silence. Naz’ terminal beeped softly and she looked down to see that their uncle had approved their assessment of the mission, shortage of missiles and all.

_ “No wheels of Empire, turn. Our gaze, freezing, petrifying.”  _ Naz smiled a little bit, more for Miya’s sake than for their uncle’s bit it seemed to relieve him a little anyway.

_ “Let’s just hope it doesn’t blow back onto us.”  _

_ “Tempest’s song will guide… Have faith.” _

***

Nina pushed open the door of the med bay with a bundle of clothes fresh out of the 3d printer under her arm. Dawn was sitting up in the bed that had been set up for them in the med bay, reading something on their hand terminal. Dawn had been in bed for a few days and the ghost of stubble was beginning to show across their scalp and brows. When Nina tossed the bundle of clothes to them, Dawn eagerly sifted through it and pulled out the binder they’d ordered. The binder they’d been wearing to compress their chest had been ruined by both the bullet hole and the auto-doc cutting it open to perform surgery. They’d been self-consciously covering themselves with a blanket since recycling the tattered garment in a truly compulsive manner.

Dawn’s eyes shone with relief as they looked at the newly fabricated piece of clothing but then immediately shot a distrusting look at Nina. She rolled her eyes and turned around, letting Dawn struggle and squirm into the binder without staring at them. Dawn was extremely strange but dysphoria was something Nina understood well enough. Some kind of bodily dysphoria was extraordinarily common amongst ExSols born with an Ascension, and Nina was no exception, having undergone a gender transition herself.

“Thank you, Miss. This one is not exceptionally comfortable in their own skin.” Dawn explained quietly.

“Ye. I’ve got Pulse, m’self. I know the feelin’.” Nina turned around to see Dawn stretching and throwing the blanket aside, a warm redness shining just under their skin indicating that Dawn was letting their Zenith burn at a low simmer. Sam hadn’t made Dawn wear a sedative brace on their arm which would allow them to incapacitate the pilot remotely, but they  _ had _ moved Dusk and put docking clamps on the Mech that would keep it grounded. Such medical braces were usually last-ditch resorts, as the Autonomous Networks sometimes forced their way into remote-controlled electronics and took control of them.

“Dawn’s task upon this world has gone quite awry, but all is not lost. This one seeks to make a surgical strike into the depths of the Talon fortress. Assistance was never sought, but it could be of use. There is a specific piece of hardware that Dawn has been charged with retrieving, but there will be other riches that this one is happy to relinquish.”

“An’ you want me to convince Sam and ‘rina that it’s worth it to attack the fortress itself, eh?” Nina asked, eyebrow raised skeptically.

“Dawn thinks that Miss Sahara has a greater appreciation for what is possible than her compatriots,” they answered calmly.

“You mean I’m reckless ‘n crazy,” Nina snorted.

“Dawn is sure some would say that. Dawn would say that Miss Sahara understands that the lives of the Bereaved are fraught by nature. Safety upon the precursor’s worlds is a cruel illusion compared to what our cousins on Earth enjoy.”

Nina was legitimately a little taken aback by Dawn’s words. Cursing ‘The Bereaver,’ the Prime Minister of the Earth Coalition who had closed the Earth gate off from the network generations ago was common enough parlance, even if it was considered very inappropriate. Dawn’s explicit naming of the Extra Solar colonies and peoples as ‘The Bereaved’ carried a certain level of solemn sacrilege that made Nina’s own casual profanity seem tame. An alarm rang throughout the facility before she could respond, and before Nina could even reach for her hand terminal, the ground shook violently as an explosion roared outside.

“The heck?” Nina grumbled, pulling out her hand terminal. The words  **_Uder Attack. Get to safeyr_ ** were on her screen, typo’d in haste. Nina’s brain raced. Carrina was asleep, so Twinshya wouldn’t be in action, but the outpost’s automated defenses had always been more than sufficient to chase off reclaimers like Widows and the like. Talon or even River had never launched an all-out attack on their facility, they never would, they had no reason to. The outpost was of minimal strategic and material value.

“Miss Sahara,” Dawn gently put a hand on Nina’s arm and she looked at them with fear surging through her. “Let Dawn get to Dusk. This one can repel the attackers.”

“What? No, the auto defences can—” Another loud rumble cut Nina off as the building shook. The sound of metal ripping and masonry crumbling was unmistakable and Nina almost lost her footing. “Heck. Come with me.”

Nina grabbed Dawn and ran out of the medical bay towards the nearest door. Smoke billowed in the hallway and Nina had to cover her mouth so that she didn’t trigger an asthma attack. Squeezing her eyes shut and holding her breath, Nina bolted through the hallway and kicked a door outside off its hinges. She charged out, exhaling through her nostrils with her eyes burning and tearing up. She looked up, hoping to see whatever it was that was tangling with their automated defenses that had gotten a stray shot off.

Nina froze in a moment of complete and utter cognitive dissonance.

A thirteen meter tall and twenty meter long walker robot was methodically climbing the hill that housed their camp. Nina had only seen videos of assault robots of that size, read about them, looked at mockups of what their schematics might be like. They existed on worlds that were the precursor’s battlefields, ones that ExSols stayed far away from, for there was no safe haven like Abrandia to be found. Ishtar was a Talon stronghold, a manufacturing and resource center for the autonomous network. Gigantic assault machines like the Colossus Tick before her shouldn’t be here, not according to everything that ExSols knew about the precursors. But it was, and it was  _ attacking _ their camp.

A barrage of sequential plasma caster fire so dense it was almost like an iridescent whip of light streaking across the sky tore into the middle of their compound. The entire structure buckled and the top two floors collapsed in on itself with a hellish shriek of melting and breaking metal. Nina was so transfixed and horrified that she just stared at the machine and didn’t notice Dawn tugging on her arm until the enby yanked so hard they made her stumble towards them.

“...dock. This one can lure…” Dawn was yelling at her but her ears were ringing and the roar of a detonating missile drowned out most of the words. She heard them say dock, though, and nodded, following them, running towards the rear of the camp where Dusk and Twinshya were waiting.

The dock was mostly intact, say for a bit of the roof that was collapsed in the corner. Ryan’s body was there, under the rubble, lying very still under the only bit of the roof that had actually collapsed. Nina stared at him numbly before Dawn tugged on her arm again. “Please, Miss Sahara, this one needs you to release the docking clamps on Dusk.”

Nina nodded and went over to where Dusk was thoroughly locked in place with three separate clamps restraining the Mech’s legs, arms, and torso in a truly unnecessary act that Sam had insisted upon. Nina went over and punched in the administrative override code into the clamps that she’d secretly installed into almost everything around this camp. With a hiss and a clank, they released, and Dawn wasted no time in nimbly climbing up into the cockpit in spite of their partially-healed injuries. 

Nina backed up slowly as Dusk rumbled to life even as a series of autocannon fire rattled through the building in a deadly cacophony that Nina wouldn’t even have noticed if she’d been unlucky enough to catch one of the rounds. Dusk moved to one of the outer doors, moving with a nimbleness that made it look like a living thing and not a Mech. It paused there for a moment, and Dawn’s voice projected outwards.

“Dawn apologizes for the subterfuge, Miss Sahara, but Dusk would stand little chance at stopping that foe.” Their voice was almost the same tone that it always was, but Nina wondered if she detected a bit of sorrow in it, or maybe she was just having another panic attack.

“H-Hey! Can’t… leave…” Nina took several steps after Dusk’s retreating form, but before she could get close, Dusk vanished behind the shroud of its stealth field. Nina stumbled, falling onto her knees where Dusk had been, staring at her hands as they made imprints in the dirt.

“Miss Sahara,” Dawn’s voice came again, from further away but not so far that Nina couldn’t have seen them if the stealth weren’t active. “Dawn suggests that you pilot that other Mech. It will be destroyed if it remains sedentary, and your comrades are likely already deceased.”

“But… It’s ‘rina’s…”Nina looked up, wobbling onto her feet. Dawn didn’t answer. Nina didn’t know if they could even hear, if they hadn’t already left. Nina stared at Twinshya’s shadowed form in the corner, numb and dazed. She knew that she knew how to pilot the Mech, knew how to release the docking clamps and knew Carrina’s access codes to power it up. It was there in her mind but right now she couldn’t recall any of it. Couldn’t even begin to fathom how she’d start the process.

Amidst the cacophonous roar of her home being torn apart, a high pitched squeak both cut through the noise and yet was distinctly out of place amidst such destruction. Nina looked down, towards the open doorway, and saw her little grey kitten Jeffie crouched low on the floor, looking up at her with his tail tucked beneath him. The sight of the terrified kitten jolted her into action, her eyes went wide and she ran towards him, scooping him up into her arms. He buried himself into her embrace, clinging tightly to her as she ran over and released the single docking clamp with her backdoor. She climbed into the cockpit that she knew so well but had never sat in. She grabbed the ventilator tube, and exhaled slowly to calm her nerves so that she didn’t gag and puke all over her poor furry passenger. She fed the breathing tube down her trachea as quickly as she dared, eyes watering, gag reflex threatening to make her sick. She flicked the machine on, and was immediately ‘rewarded’ with the strange sensation of having a machine breathe for her. She strapped herself in, started Twinshya’s boot sequence, and turned on her Pulse.

Her anxiety, numbness and terror melted away instantly, replaced with a sense of power, of preparedness, confidence, and nigh-maniacal euphoria. She would have cackled with glee if she didn’t have a tube down her throat, and her fingers darted to the controls with a confidence that  _ should _ come from piloting the glorious piece of technology that was Twinshya. The Mech that she should  _ always _ have been the pilot of. The Mech responded to her whim and loped out of the same door that Dusk had vanished through. 

Twinshya’s gait was a bit uneven, pushing off with the back leg, landing on its front two. She burst out of the crumbling remnants of her home and her sensors lit up, analyzing the outline of the Colossus Tick, putting pins on its weapon systems and various other points of interest. Her fingers darted to the comm systems, and she typed out a message in a wide broadcast.

_ ‘Nina here ridin Twinshya whos alive? ill come get ya’  _ She considered sending out an audio broadcast along with it, but speaking with a tube down her throat was a trick that she hadn’t learned yet. Twinshya had some software that cleaned up her voice for transmissions, but she still had to use it right.

She cut a wide path out of the building, keeping away from the Colossus Tick. The massive robot made short work of their camp, finishing the job it started and reducing it to utter rubble. No answer came on the comm. Dead silence. Nina entered Counter-Pulse, Twinshya shifting out of offense mode and into defence mode. Along with it, her chest froze up and she ceased to be able to breathe under her own power. Her euphoria, too, faded, and Nina felt the crushing horror of what had just happened grip her once again.

Hands shaking, Nina piloted Twinshya away from the destruction of her home and colleagues without even thinking about what direction she was going in. An alert lit up her screen and she looked over at it numbly. The readout for her deflectors had registered a high-temperature aversion. She frowned at it for a second, feeling like she knew what that meant, but it wasn’t quite coming to her. Two more aversions showed up, and then one more appeared and blared bright red with an alert. Chassis damage. Realization hit her and she cursed internally, swapping to her rear cameras to see five four-legged walker robots chasing her and firing plasma casters at her. Fleas, interception craft that would easily outpace Twinshya and attempt to detain her so that heavier pieces of machinery could be brought to bear.

Nina knew Twinshya better than Carrina did, she analyzed all of the combat data after the fact, and while she had never piloted it herself, she knew what to do. Twinshya pivoted, pushing off with its front legs and pivoting on its back as it twisted its torso to face the side-mounted autocannons towards her attackers. She concaved the torso ever so slightly to tilt the two outer autocannons inward slightly and fired all three. All three slugs converged upon the nearest attacker and struck simultaneously, tearing off two of legs and the mounting where the plasma caster was attached to the main body. Immediately afterwards she leapt forward to make herself a moving target, spinning the Mech around so that she could bring the cannons on the right side to bear while the left side ones reloaded and cooled down. The enemy robots split up and tried to encircle her but she twisted Twinshya into position and fired. Autocannon four cracked, slug slamming into the body of one of the robots and sending it staggering backwards but not quite disabling it. Autocannons five and six threw up errors. Six had jammed and misfired, five had suffered a short circuit. Nina growled in frustration and just leapt forward again, trying to get behind a nearby cluster of rocks.

Plasma casters scored the ground and rocks around her as the pursuing robots gave chase and tried to encircle her. She reoriented and fired cannons one through three at the first robot that jumped around the edge of the rocks after her. One of her slugs missed but the other two ripped into the torso of the machine and fried something vital enough to bring it down. Another came around the right side and she did the minor adjustment she needed to fire autocannon four at the robot on the other side. Again, the single slug wasn’t quite enough to down her target but it did stop it from targeting her properly, its plasma caster went wide and burned a hole in the rock. A trickle of magma rolled down the side of the stone, cooling and solidifying before it could reach the ground.

Nina felt her Pulse shift and become active again with an unmistakable viscerality that was as jolting as if she’d just been sprayed with freezing water. She’d activated her Pulse many times before without the assistance of the ventilator but then always lost consciousness during the Counter-Pulse, so the sensation of transitioning from one to another in this way was new to her. She paused for a moment in shock, not registering that she still had enemies shooting at her. Three plasma projectiles came in fast and the now-weakened deflectors only managed to avert one of them, and Twinshya’s diagnostics screeched and alerted her to the damage being done. Without even looking at the damage reports, Nina aimed and fired the railgun. There was a deafening supersonic boom as the heavy tungsten slug was nigh-instantly accelerated to several times the speed of sound. The slug hit and obliterated Nina’s target like she’d just fired a pistol at an ant, continuing onward to send a forceful spray of dirt and soil into the air.

In spite of the circumstances, Nina couldn’t help but find herself grinning around her breathing tube at the obscene act of overkill. Some part of her knew the euphoria was getting to her but she didn’t dwell on that. Nina being in Pulse put Twinshya into offense mode and allowed her to bring not just the main cannon to bear but also the high-intensity laser mounted on its back. When the two damaged robots limped around the rocks after her, she was able to target lock them with the laser and burn holes in their flimsy frames. The stupid crummy laser overheated and shut down after only about six seconds of use but it was enough to melt through one robot’s leg and finish shearing off the weapon mounting of the other. Her pursuit disabled, Nina wasted no time and didn’t let herself relax. She set Twinshya into a quick run down the hill towards Abrandia before reinforcements came, Fleas were always used by the autonomous network to harass and slow targets so that other machines could catch up and finish quarry off. She pushed the Mech as hard as she could, glancing at damage reports and wincing at the work she knew she’d have to do to fix them, praying that none of the damage would cause her to break down before she could get to safety.

***

_ 1-06:03 Butterfly: _ _ Miss Nina? Are you alright? What happened when you went to see Dawn? _

_ 1-08:22 Butterfly: _ _ Nina, I think the Militia just put out an alert and warrant for your arrest, are you alright? _

_ 1-08:45 Butterfly: _ _ They are definitely looking for you. If you get this message, don’t come to Abrandia. I hope you’re okay. _

_ 2-20:21 NinaS: _ _ Talon just flattened our camp _

_ 2-20:30 Butterfly: _ _ Huh??? _

_ 2-20:31 NinaS: _ _ Talon sent a colo tick. _

_ 2-20:31 NinaS: _ _ Everybody is dead. _

_ 2-20:32 Butterfly: _ _ Nina that’s not funny, I’m serious the militia is looking for you. _

_ 2-20:32 NinaS: _ _ Not jokin _

_ 2-20:33 NinaS: _ _ I took twinshya and barely got away _

_ 2-20:34 Butterfly: _ _ You’re not kidding? Where are you? _

  
_ 2-20:34 NinaS: _ _ Sending coords _


	4. Chapter 4

Twinshya was in really terrible condition. One of the plasma caster hits had burned a hole in Twinshya’s back leg, the other two had hit the Mech just below the cockpit and had come within half a foot of killing her. She’d have to take it apart to fully evaluate the depths of the damage but the conduit and power supply were probably totally hecked. Autocannon six’s misfire had basically scrapped the entire weapon assembly beyond repair, and five’s power failure probably meant the conduit needed to be replaced. Actually, for all she knew, even if she fixed the conduit for autocannon five, it would misfire just as badly as six and just cause more damage. She’d have to uninstall it, fix it, and test fire it to be sure.

She laughed, suddenly and bitterly. She had no garage, no tools, no spare parts. Thinking about fixing Twinshya at this point was a sad joke. Even if she could fix it, what would be the point? She’d be better off taking it apart and selling the parts for passage through a gate. Maybe she could apply for refugee status or citizenship on some other planet. She couldn’t go to Abrandia and trying to go to Hallucia would likely end her up as one of the Hallu’s wives; the man was an infamous chaser.

The high pitched whine of a small electric engine drew Nina’s attention and she walked over to an opening in the tall, twisting canopy of vines that she’d hidden Twinshya behind. Robin’s lithe form was hunched over a scooter as he drove towards Nina’s hiding spot. He probably couldn’t see Twinshya or even her just yet but she’d sent him her exact coordinates. Robin started to circle around the dense wall of Flora and Nina rolled her eyes and pushed her way through the vines so that she could wave to him. He spotted her and drove over, parking his scooter and removing his helmet.

“Nina! Are you—”

“Miss Nina,” She cut him off, scowling.

Robin came up to just a step away from her and blinked in confusion. “Err… is it…? Miss Nina, are you okay? What happened?”

“Long heckin’ story,” she muttered, looking behind her at Twinshya’s form, barely visible in the shadows of the overgrowth.

“Tell me. I came out here to see you,” he took a cautious step forward and took her hand in his. She allowed it, and sighed, leading him in back to where she’d hidden Twinshya.

“Went to see Dawn. Turns out that weirdo is involved in some sum’n shady. They ate a few slugs and I ended up dragging their bleedin’ butt all the way to our med bay. Guess the ‘litia thinks I’m involved.”

“You… carried them to your camp? Yeah no kidding the militia thinks you’re involved, Miss Nina, you helped them escape.” Robin sighed and gave her a nervous smile.

“Fer one, the ‘litia can blow me. Fer another, I don’t care how much of a shrew Dawn is, I ain’t letting someone bleed out on the street when the people who shot at them tried to crack me, too.”

“So then… Talon attacked your camp? Your message said it was a Colossus Tick, you don’t mean one of those gigantic assault machines on the battlefield worlds, do you?”

“It was pretty hecking big, yea. Looked like a Colo Tick, I’ve seen the videos.” Nina walked over to Twinshya and placed a hand on one of its front legs.

“There’s… not supposed to be any machines like that on Ishtar, is there?” he asked delicately.

“Yer reavin’ right there’s not. Doesn’t mean it didn’t almost turn me into fumes.”

“There’s… the Autonomous Networks don’t ever send that kind of firepower after human settlements…” Robin shook his head, not believing it.

Nina aggressively took a step towards Robin, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder. Robin flinched a little bit, looking up at her not with fear in his eyes but a sort of pain, almost a betrayal. She shook her head and let him go, covering her face with her hand. “Ye. It makes no reavin’ sense. But Rina, Sam, Ryan, and Nugan ain't any less dead. I ain’t any less hung out to dry.”

Robin hugged her suddenly, squeezing her tight. She was a little taken aback but she let him do it. She let out a ragged breath and put one arm around him to squeeze him back. “Nina I want to send a message to the militia to alert them. If Talon hit your camp like that, they might hit Abrandia too.”

“Keep my name outta’ it.” she gave him a little frown, and he looked up at her.

“I can do it anonymously. Where are you going to stay?”

“Not a lead. Militia will scoop me up if I try to go into the city. I thought ‘bout goin’ off-world, but, uhh…” She paused and rubbed the back of her neck uncomfortably.

Robin smiled at her a little, and nodded. “I’ll come with you. We’ll work something out.”

“Didn’ wanna ask you. But… thanks.” Nina blushed a little, and Robin just grinned at her coyly.

“There’s plenty of opportunities for a Mech pilot in the network. Twinshya isn’t great but you always complained about how Sam never spent the money or used the parts you guys collected on upgrades. We can fix it up, make it gleam a little.”

“Twinshya is a pile. How are we even gonna fix it? Can’t drag it to some offworld mechanic and pay for parts by sellin’ your booty, if we even get it that far.” Nina looked at the blown-out autocannon port and scowled. 

Robin giggled at that and smirked at her. “Why not? I’m pretty enough. I could find someone who pays in autocannon parts.”

Nina rolled her eyes at him, and gave him a slightly recriminating scowl but he just kept a sort of a coy yet serious look on his face as he smiled at her. “Err… Butterfly, I was kiddin’. Wasn’t askin’ you to…” She rubbed her shoulder, feeling a tad embarrassed that she’d asked Robin to prostitute himself to support her.

“I know, but it’s nothing I haven’t done before. I wouldn’t mind.” He had a look of innocent sincerity on his face and Nina felt a flush of embarrassment that he’d twisted her into a knot the way he often did. He’d pay for that, later.

“Don’ think I ain’t keepin’ a tab on your brattiness just cuz I’m not in the mood to enforce jus’ now.” she harrumphed grumpily but Robin just tittered a bit and nodded.

“We’ll work this out, together. I want to do this with you.” Robin smiled at her. He wore a beautiful, gorgeous expression that made her heart melt and dulled the cutting edge of the anxiety and horror that was stabbing through her chest. Nina grabbed him and pulled him close, crushing him in a hug that made him squawk as the air was forced out of his lungs.

“...Thanks,” she whispered to him. She squeezed him tightly until he squirmed a little and then let him go. He wheezed and coughed softly but grinned good-naturedly and a conspiratorial grin found its way onto his face.

“So… Twinshya must be registered in Abrandia under Carrina’s name, right?”

“Ye. Prob.” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully, trying to remember the last time Carrina had actually taken the Mech into the city. Years ago, probably.

“So, let’s say to the border agents that Twinshya’s radio array is busted. Won’t be a hard sell with the condition it’s in. They won’t demand that a registered pilot take her ventilator out just to talk to them.”

“Y’think? Never known an officer to not harass me at any opportunity.” Nina scowled slightly.

“Yeah, because you look the part of someone they expect to have to harass, not a pilot.” Nina scowled at him more and Robin raised his hands defensively. “Hey! They’re the jerks! I think you're great no matter how much of a delinquent you look like”

“Butterflies ain't animals much for diggin’ I thought.” Nina tapped her foot and frowned at him. Robin just grinned mischievously. “Fine. S’do this. If it doesn’t work then guess I was hecked over anyway.”

“It’ll work fiiiine,” Robin waved her concerns away and exited Nina’s little shelter in the direction of his scooter. “I’ll meet you at the gates and explain to the customs agent, they won’t even look at you twice.”

Nina got into Twinshya and delicately maneuvered it around the strange vine-like growths that were native to Ishtar. She killed her radio and followed Robin’s retreating figure speeding away on his little scooter towards Abrandia. She caught up to him easily and kept pace behind him. As they crossed the field that housed Abrandia, she got a hail on the radio and in the distance she saw the familiar silhouette of Titan shift and move towards her. She continued to approach slowly and non threateningly even as Titan hit her with a target lock from its disintegration beam. She felt a surge of panic but kept on approach, playing up the damage on Twinshya’s back leg a little, but only a little since one of the joints  _ was _ actually sticking pretty badly. If Titan chose to fire that weapon at her, none of Twinshya’s defenses would matter even a little, she’d be dust before she knew what was happening. She reached down to pet Jeffie, still a tad nervous.

Robin zipped on ahead towards the industrial district and one of the major entry gateways into the city for Mechs. A few moments later, the target lock from Titan dropped, and the massively over-engineered Mech stopped approaching.

She saw Robin dismount his scooter and approach the customs office. She parked Twinshya just outside the city limits and waited. Only a few minutes later, Robin came out of the office and waved her forward. She walked Twinshya into the city without a single accostation of any kind, following Robin’s scooter. He led the two of them to one of the public docking spots only a short distance inside the city and she parked Twinshya inside, powering it down and waiting for her Counter-Pulse to run out. She waited out the last minute and then once she was able to breathe again, removed the breathing tube with a series of coughs and a brief fit of retching. She looked through the cameras and saw Robin, scooter parked nearby, talking to one of the engineering administrators. She shut everything down and climbed out of the Mech, opening herself up to the familiar sound of people working on machinery.

“...Pretty banged up. Do those deflectors even work properly?” The guy was looking over Twinshya with a critical eye.

“A little, not a lot,” Nina answered, wiping a little of the drool off her chin.

“We’d rather do the maintenance ourselves, thanks. Can you just charge parts and equipment to my account?” Robin asked. Nina frowned at that. They hadn’t discussed using Robin’s money to buy parts, she hadn’t even thought Robin had any savings to buy parts with.

“‘Course. Honestly I doubt my mechanics would know where to start with a machine like this, anyway. Let my office know what you need. I’m guessin’ you’ll want to prioritize with how much work it needs.” He gave Robin a grin and a nod, tapping a few buttons on his hand terminal and then turning and walking away as he continued to tap.

“Butterfly, we didn’ discuss drainin’ yer accounts.” Nina mumbled quietly to him, trying not to get too upset by this.

Robin snorted at that and looked at her with an amused expression. “If we’re going off-world, Miss Nina, then my Abrandian currency won’t be worth much. May as well invest it now.”

“S’pose,” she agreed begrudgingly, turning around to assess the damage to Twinshya. “Guess the first step is figuring out what to fix, huh?”

“Good thing we have a great mechanic to do that, huh?” Robin asked, walking up to her and taking her hand in his to give it a squeeze.

“Suck-up,” she grinned at him and leaned down to give him a kiss. “Let’s get started.”

***

Miya tromped Titan up the rocky, snow-covered crest. The snowfall had started on her way here and was piling on the six-inch layer that already covered the land. Titan was a fifty eight tonne Mech, its’ heavy footfalls weren’t hindered at all by the environment, but lighter machines may not fare so well. The precursor facility up ahead was a combination of an open-pit mine and a material recycling plant. Very few precursor facilities actively mined ore out of the ground anymore, many planets in the network had been all but stripped of valuable metals eons ago. Instead, recycling facilities were the lifeblood of the autonomous networks’ war effort against one another. Perhaps the precursors’ civilization had been this way for a long time, or perhaps they had adopted such a model on their own after their masters had died off. That was one of countless questions that may never be answered.

Miya raised Titan’s arm, pointing the disintegration beam mounted there at a long-ranged missile pad that was already painting her Mech with a target lock. The weapon itself was the only thing mounted on Titan’s left arm. It consisted of a pair of vaguely cylindrical devices tipped with metal spikes that ExSol scientists claimed seemed to resemble particle accelerators, but their understanding didn’t go much beyond that. When it came down to it, understanding  _ how _ the technology works wasn’t important, it was only important that they understood how to  _ make it _ work.

Miya targeted the weapon at the missile emplacement and started the pre-fire diagnostic. Miya hated that the system wouldn’t even fire before running a check, it slowed the weapon down, made it less useful against moving targets, but the engineers insisted that it was necessary. The test only took a second and a half, and the weapon fired. Two lines shot out of the spikes at the end of the disintegration beam, travelling almost perfectly parallel. The beams of energy were a ghostly, translucent red that didn’t even register properly on most of her instruments. They angled towards one another ever so slightly, and collided with one another right where Miya had aimed, right in front of the missile emplacement that was about to fire on her. There was a soft hiss and a pop as the two beams impacted with one another and send out a shockwave of power that rippled through the air The metal and ceramic of the missile emplacement puffed outward in a gentle swell of powder and dust as all matter within a ten meter radius of the discharge just… disintegrated. What little material avoided the blast collapsed down into the cloud and kicked it outwards.

The facility’s defenses mobilized immediately, no doubt having reassessed the threat that Titan posed. Three large robots emerged and began walking towards her, immediately identified and labelled by her instruments as Giraffes. They were three-legged and had tall, somewhat skinny bodies that housed ammunition for the heavy gatling cannons mounted on the top. They started towards Titan even as a swarm several doen fleas charged through the snow, sending up small showers around them as they moved around to flank her. Miya began to backtrack down the hill, getting Titan out of the Giraffe’s range and bringing the triple-barrelled rapid-fire medium autocannon on the Mech’s right arm to bear. Miya acquired and resolved target locks rapidly, the autocannon spitting out high velocity shells to smash the Fleas into the ground as per their namesake. Eleven were destroyed with Titan’s autocannon not even beginning to approach its limitations, before the Fleas on her right flank peeled off and tried a less direct approach. 

The dozen approaching from her left came around a snowdrift and fired their plasma casters, the super-heated gas causing ripples in the snowfall as they approached. Titan’s deflectors redirected the fire, perfectly capable of keeping the weak bundles of plasma away from her armour at this distance. She turned Titan to face her attackers, arming several direct-fire missiles, the kind that the two of them should have left behind for missiles capable of chasing a nimble, airborne target. She fired off four of them in rapid sequence, creating a wall of fire and force that decimated the attacking Fleas. Her sensors went dark for a moment, snow and fragments of rock obscuring the remaining Fleas from her instruments. The little pips vanished, replaced with another indicator as the first of the Giraffes came up over the crest that she’d first fired upon them from. The heavy robot didn’t fully come into view, but the top half, the half with the gatling cannon, had a clear line of sight. A hail of slugs came quickly and Miya moved Titan quickly to avoid the worst of the assault. Rounds not fully deflected pinged and cracked against Titan’s armour, causing minor amounts of damage. A round struck at the shoulder joint of Titan’s right arm and penetrated, causing her diagnostics to flash red for a few moments before going green again. She brought the right arm up and fired the autocannon as rapidly as the weapon was capable of. Heavy slugs smashed into the top of the Giraffe and made it stagger backwards, gatling cannon firing wildly into the air. Armour plates crumbled and broke away as TItan’s attack drove it past the ridge, damaging it severely but not into inoperation. An alert came up on Miya’s diagnostics and her autocannon shut down to reload and to disperse heat. Miya took Titan into a full-throttle run away from the rise even as the other two Giraffes came into line of sight. Their heavy guns fired, bullets chewing at the rocks that Titan ducked behind. They continued to fire, cannons pounding the rocks into fragments, seeming intent to tear Titan’s cover to shreds rather than wait her out.

Miya launched one of her two targeting drones up into the air. The little airborne device surveilled the area and painted a targeting lock onto the two approaching Giraffes. It didn’t last long before River, the autonomous network itself, forced its way into the drone and took control of it, locking Miya’s controls out. An instant later, the timed explosive planted in the drone went off, destroying the drone and denying River the use of it. It didn’t matter, the drone had fulfilled its purpose, and Miya fired twenty of her guided missiles. The nimble weapons shot directly up intro the air, flying high and then angling themselves to descend upon their targets from almost directly above. About half of them got through the Giraffe’s countermeasures, the light payloads striking their targets, damaging and staggering them.

Miya brought Titan out of her half-shredded cover and raised its left arm, sighting and aiming the disintegration beam which had just finished its charge cycle. Twin red beams flashed through the air, intersecting with one another directly in between the two Giraffes. The wave of force travelled outward, vaporizing some of the legs and half the bodies of the two robots, sending a tumble of metal and ceramic dust to weigh down the snow. The two robots fell inwards, crashing into one another. The right one exploded as some of its munitions detonated prematurely. Miya marched Titan forward, exulting in the raw force she’d just delivered, the surging melody of her Tempest bringing her will into existence. The third, mangled Giraffe wobbled around the corner, trying to fire its gatling cannon at Titan but instead receiving a triad of autocannon slugs that ripped the top half clear of the bottom. 

Miya retook the ledge, sensors dark as River’s resistance broke and fled, abandoning the facility to Titan. She sent out a long-range ping, looking for the air support that she knew would come. A squadron of twenty aerial drones were inbound, and Titan’s guided missile reserves were at half capacity. The data would be in Titan’s navigation logs, Miya would have plenty of plausible deniability for why she was calling the mission off. If the Hallucian’s long-range scanners were working, they themselves would possibly send a team to take control of the facility. Governor General Yamane would be embarrassed rather than emboldened, just as Naz had wished. She retreated, turning Titan around and putting it into a three-quarter throttle run back towards Abrandia. It would be a several hour trip, to cross half the continent.

_ “Such a powerful warrior, my brave sister~”  _ Naz crooned encouragingly, humming internally to Tempest’s song.

_ “I could have done more. This was a chance to push the limits of us, and of Titan. Instead all I got was a tiny taste.”  _ Miya grumbled.

_ “Be not upset for lost symbolism, dear Miya. It’s not really lost, it never existed at all.”  _ Miya never would have understood Naz’ words if the two of them didn’t share a mind, but the words came with impressions and feelings that carried additional meaning.

“Oi! Naz! Naz! Come in!” Her uncle’s voice immediately came through the speakers in an emergency transmission.

“Yes, Uncle?” Naz replied.

“We need ya back here AFAP! Big force inbound from Talon!” He sounded panicked, which explained the emergency transmission.

“We are already on our way, Uncle,” Naz reassured him.

“Talon can’t possibly mobilize a force to threaten the militia, old man, stop being such a–”

“Pike off, Miya, im yer CO!” Wasseim snapped at her, the rebuff filling Miya with rage and indignation. “This is different. Just full throttle yer butts back here!”

“Two of us, but only one posterior, Uncle,” Naz replied cheerfully, and Wasseim cut the connection.

***

Dawn slowly drifted back to consciousness, and was immediately aware of the soft howling and whistling sound coming through the cockpit’s speakers. They groaned softly and unbuckled themselves from the seat so they could stretch a bit. They worked the stiffness out of their joints slowly, wishing wistfully for a moment that this would be the last time they slept in the cockpit this mission. It wouldn’t, they knew.

Macau was a bleak windy dustball of a planet whose main redeeming virtue was that the autonomous networks seemed to have even less interest in it than the ExSol’s did. The atmosphere wasn’t quite breathable, so even if Dawn had felt safe sleeping on a bedroll next to Dusk, it wouldn’t have been possible. There was enough oxygen that Dusk’s atmospheric filters were able to keep the oxygen levels sustainable in the cockpit.

Dawn flared their Zenith a little higher to warm themselves up and also to stir Dusk’s reactor and systems into action. They dropped the stealth field that Dusk had been hiding behind and started the Mech back into motion again, heading towards the only bastion of ExSol society on the entire planet. Yvaim was a domed, atmospherically controlled colony with a massive transmission antenna that maintained a line of sight to all five of the gates on Macau. It was the reason the colony had been established at all, and it was the reason why it hadn’t been abandoned after the Awakening of the Autonomous Networks.

Dusk marched through the dust and against the wind towards Yvaim with the stealth field disabled. The administrators of Yvaim didn’t like surprises, and Dawn needed to dock Dusk there for a while. They needed to walk straight into the complex’s sensors and be seen before they got too close.

The transmission request came almost six hours of travel later, long before Dusk’s own sensors picked anything up, but beyond the point where Dawn had expected to have been contacted given their global position. Dawn accepted both audio and visual signal and a young man’s face appeared on one of Dusk’s internal displays, his hair meticulously combed back and the collar of his dark blue militaristic uniform free of wrinkles.

“Identify,” he asked, frowning ever so slightly at Dawn.

“This one is an Agent of the Reunification Commission, requesting permission to dock at Yvaim.”

“Hold,” he vanished tersely, leaving Dawn with a blank screen. They sat back in their cockpit and waited patiently, keeping Dusk perfectly still. Yvaim was a highly militarized and structured facility, despite having very little actual military power outside of its security officers. If Dawn wanted, they could probably reduce Yvaim to rubble with Dusk alone, the facility had absolutely nothing to ward off a machine of this calibre.

After a few minutes of waiting, Dusk’s screen came back to life, showing a man who had to be the first one’s father. Even if the resemblance hadn’t given the two away, Yvaim was staffed by just barely over a hundred people, the familial ties were deeply intertwined into the outpost’s workings.

“Title?” the older man asked.

“Agent Dawn.”

“Approach the station, docking bay 8.” He replied and cut the connection. Dawn frowned a little at the rude man and started Dusk up again, heading for the station. Their mission had gone mostly awry, but the planned contingency was for Dawn to take Dusk to Yvaim and await further contact. Arrangements would have been made, so it was strange for the Yvaim officers to be acting with such enmity.

Dusk pushed against the howling wind towards the dark shadow of the complex ahead of them. A door opened just as Dawn approached and they went inside, hatch closing behind them almost instantly. As the lights in the dock came on, Dawn could see why, dust and dirt had accrued inside the room after even such a brief opening.

Dawn maneuvered their Mech into the designated position and a pair of clamps closed around the machine’s legs, tightening until Dusk was effectively immobilized. Dawn could probably still get out of them if they really wanted, but not without causing a massive commotion and probably some structural damage to Dusk itself.

Dawn climbed down carefully, not wanting to reopen the bullet wounds that had only barely just healed. Truthfully, they should have remained in bed for another week or so. They’d probably need some surgery at some point, perhaps they could persuade some local doctor to take a look.

The far door opened with a woosh, and Dawn turned around slowly, still battling their aches and injuries. Before they even saw it, they heard several pairs of footsteps moving quickly and with co-ordinated discipline. When they turned all the way around, their fears were confirmed when they saw four security officers pointing automatic rifles at them. It definitely didn’t look like Dawn was being greeted cautiously, it looked like Dawn was being arrested.

“Drop the sidearm slowly, and kick it away,” One of the officers commanded, hand twitching. Dawn didn’t doubt for a moment that these people were capable of shooting if they thought them a threat. Dawn very slowly grabbed their handheld plasma caster by a handhold that was as far away from the trigger as they could manage. For a brief moment, their eyes flashed around the room, analyzing the room, considering engaging these people. The moment was extremely brief, and they dropped the plasma caster to the ground and kicked it away. Fortunately, Macau’s gravity wasn’t even half what Earth’s was, so they didn’t worry about damaging the expensive piece of equipment.

“Dawn of the RU, you’re under arrest as an enemy combatant. Do you have any objections?” One of the officers lowered his rifle slightly and moved closer.

“This one does not understand, but they do not object,” Dawn replied calmly. They actually didn’t understand what was happening, but at the same time it also wasn’t especially difficult to guess. Dawn wasn’t privvy to the RU’s deeper operational goals, but they knew that keeping the current power structure of the ExSol colonies intact wasn’t a part of that plan. Perhaps some other operative had suffered a setback just as Dawn had. Perhaps a conflict had been sparked sooner than anticipated.

The officer snorted derisively, lowering his rifle and turning Dawn around to fasten restraints around their arms. “Definitely one of RU’s drones. Nice of you to deliver yourself to us.”

“Your actions in luring Dawn to this facility were quite underhanded. This one sought only aid and shelter.” Dawn allowed the security officers to accost them without struggle, it would do little good to provoke them into roughing them up with their wounds still not fully healed.

The four security officers didn’t respond or chat with Dawn at all, just roughly led them through the cramped and immaculately kept hallways of Yvaim. They took Dawn into a detention cell, a sparse room with a small cot, a terminal built into the wall, and several cameras in the ceiling. The arm restraints came off and one of the security officers shoved Dawn into the room and shut the transparent plastic door behind them.

“This one still requires medical attention,” Dawn called back at the retreating officers. They ignored them, but Dawn doubted that they’d neglect to mention it to their commanding officer. Dawn decided to make the best of it and lie down on the cot. It wasn’t especially comfortable, but at least it was horizontal and Dawn wasn’t strapped into it.

Dawn sat down on the cot and looked down, opening their palm to examine at the small device concealed within. One of the security officers had slipped a small data drive to them whilst arresting them. If protocol was being followed, the drive would contain further instructions for Dawn and also a set of security codes for Yvaim. They carefully tucked the drive in between some of the crevices in the cot, and laid back down. The very beginnings of a nap were settling in around the corners of their consciousness when a knock came at the door to their cell. Dawn groaned softly and sat up, wincing as pain shot through their leg where the bullet wounds were.

“Sleeping already?” The older man who Dawn had spoken to before stood at the door, looking down at them.

“This one was shot several times on their previous assignment. Such injury has the capacity to exhaust a person.” Dawn answered groggily. They weren’t going to share any details about their assignment, but the bullet wounds would be plenty noticeable at even a cursory inspection. Besides, a cursory inspection was what Dawn wanted them to do.

“I wanted to apologize for all of this, Agent,” The man’s voice went low, and his eyes went to the floor. “Soldier to soldier, I can tell you’re getting the broken end of the branch, here.”

“Truthfully, that is this one’s birthright…” Dawn murmured softly. “Dawn will be asking for your forgiveness, when they bring your world to ruin in turn.”

The older security officer chuckled softly at that, but didn’t seem upset by Dawn’s promise. “I’ll get the doc to take a look at you.”

***

Miya spotted the plume of smoke long before she saw the city limits of Abrandia. She felt a bit of worry, remembering her uncle’s panic and how she’d been dismissive towards him. She pushed Titan through the tangled flora, vegetation crunching underneath metal feet. She expected Abrandia, or perhaps the ruins of Abrandia, to dominate her vision but instead it was the smoking, twisted ruins of a Colossus Tick. The massive machine lay broken just a short distance away from the city limits, limbs blown apart, melted, and snapped. The entire front half of the main body had been caved in and smashed apart with missile impacts and plasma caster fire; the city’s defenders had no doubt focused their fire upon that part of the machine. The Tick appeared to have been the bulk of the force that Talon had sent to attack the city, but it wasn’t the only thing. Miya recognized dozens of other models surrounding the wreckage, Fleas, Giraffes, Skimmers, Thumpers, and even a few Widows.

The entire northern perimeter defenses of Abrandia had been functionally obliterated. No single section of the walls had escaped severe damage, and some sections had been completely collapsed. Several Abrandian Mechs, many of which she recognized, were lying in ruins on the field. Some destroyed beyond recognition, their pilots almost certainly dead, and some merely disabled. Those had crews around them, fixing up the damage and getting them ready for transport to a more long-term facility inside the city. The city itself looked mostly unscathed, though the battle appeared to have been costly, and very very close. Titan’s presence would no doubt have tipped the balance. The Disintegration Beam in particular was well-suited to neutralizing enormous threats like a Colossus Tick. 

A connection request assailed her much later than it probably should have, the person responsible for contacting her was probably preoccupied. She accepted the request, expecting her Uncle, but instead it was the voice of one of the Abrandian Mech squad whose name she couldn’t quite remember.

“Titan, c’min. You right?” she asked.

“Not even the most ephemeral whispers of this attack, on the way here.” Naz replied sombrely.

“Except for the Knight-Major’s panicked message,” Miya added.

“Ye. KniMaj wants you t’patrol ‘round ‘ere. Gotta pull pilots t’sickbay. Can’t without ya.”

“Understood. We’re going without sleep but we can take up the perimeter for a few hours while the squad gets patched up,” Miya responded.

“Ay. Make sure KniMaj knows,” she replied, sounding relieved. Miya spotted several of their Mechs, start to walk off the battlefield, two were walking awkwardly with damaged limbs and one was probably only moving half as fast as it could. 

The site of the battle wasn’t quiet, crews worked, injured people screamed and cried as they were transported to the hospital, and occasionally the ruined robots broke and collapsed, or some unspent ammunition detonated. It had a sort of calmness to it, however. Things proceeded along smoothly, Abrandia had ample emergency services available and crews worked quickly and efficiently to repair the damage, get the wounded to safety, and to fully disable and disarm the destroyed robots before the ammunition exploded or Talon decided to try and power them back up again. It was Talon that had attacked the city, Miya spotted the emblem of the Autonomous Network on several wrecks and that besides, there was no way any other faction could possibly have brought such a force to bear without bringing it through the gates. Even as it was, the force that had attacked Abrandia went quite a bit beyond what their intelligence said Talon was capable of.

Finally, with their eyes drooping, a connection request came from their uncle, and Miya accepted it.

“Y’holdin, Naz?” he asked. Miya wasn’t terribly offended that their uncle always seemed to address Naz, he didn’t care for Miya, and the feeling was mutual. She was just as happy not to have to talk to him.

“Awake for many hours, Uncle,” Naz replied with a yawn.

“I know, I know. Bring Titan on in but keep ‘er ready to go. GovGen wants a chat.”

“Himiko seeks to soothe the hurt of this attack. Our dignity, targeted to that end.” Naz said.

“Nah… Well… She better not. I got yer back, y’know that, ya?”

“I do, Uncle,” Naz replied cheerfully, ignoring the indignation and resentment boiling in Miya’s gut.

_ “She cannot blame–” _

_ “Have faith, dear sister. Miss Yamane may lash out, but if we react with compassion, all will be well.”  _ Naz reassured her, attempting to calm the anger Miya was feeling with her own peaceful emotions.

_ “Ugh. Just don’t get us thrown in prison.”  _ Miya gave up in exasperation and piloted Titan towards its dock. She had to pilot the Mech around the rubble of the old gateway she would have used, and instead found a section of the wall that had been cleared and a temporary road had been set up leading into the city’s industrial district. Miya had to pilot Titan carefully, the road was narrower than the wide gate that normally handled this sort of traffic and crews and people were flowing in and out constantly as people worked to repair the damage that was dealt and to start dismantling the robots that had been destroyed just outside the city limits. The attack would no doubt be a severe blow to Abrandia in the short term, but eventually they may be able to repurpose enough of the massive amount of technology that lay salvageable outside the city gates to recoup their material losses. The loss of civilian life, skilled operators and pilots, and the perception of Abrandia as a safe place to live would be the more serious problem that Himiko would be concerned with. Besides, leaving usable material outside the city limits would only draw salvage operations from Talon itself, or even from another one of the networks. 

A Mech registered on Titan’s sensors as Miya slowly moved towards its dock amongst the traffic moving carefully to the city limits. She didn’t recognize it, and, frowning, she pulled up some more information. “Twinshya,” some scavenger Mech. She frowned at it for a moment, wondering what it had been doing here and where it was going. If it was leaving the city, it’d be impossible to track or detain it if it got past. Miya lost interest almost immediately, but Naz’ curiosity was piqued. She was interested not out of a sense of duty, but just fascination with how out of place the lone, limping Mech was. She put in a connection request to Twinshya and the Mech immediately paused. It was frozen there for several moments while the connection pinged and awaited a response. Naz even got a little worried, but eventually the request went through with voice only.

“Ye?” The pilot asked. It was a gruff, deep woman’s voice. Naz noted that she seemed nervous and was trying to sound impatient to cover that up. 

“You’ve Permission to depart? Not flying through chaos, Twinshya?” Naz asked.

“Of ‘course I— Wait, Nazmiya?” The pilot paused and a moment later, permission for video came through on the connection. A woman with thick arms, darkly tanned skin and short hair came on to Titan’s monitors that Naz both didn’t recognize, and did recognize.

“Nathaniel? Undergone metamorphosis?” Naz asked, remembering the boy she’d gone to school with.

“Nina, now. Yer actually pilotin’ Titan, Nazmiya?” She asked, chuckling.

“Merely Naz, now,” She answered with a smile, remembering that she had known Nina before Miya had come out. “My sullen counterpart, Miya.”

“Yeah. We’re not just piloting Titan, it was made specifically for us,” Miya piped in.

“Oh, yer plural? ‘splains a lot. Bet bein’ open with that goes over great with the ‘litia’s big crows.” Nina snickered softly. A tiny squeak came through the speakers, and a little kitten jumped up onto Nina’s shoulders, drawing a surprised grunt from the big woman.

“Understanding is sparse, always.” Naz smiled, even as Miya’s anger buzzed at the truth of her words.

Nina’s eyes suddenly went a little bit wide, as though she’d suddenly realized something. “Err… ‘bout the ‘litia, Naz… Don’t ‘spose I could talk ya into fergettin’ ya saw me?”

“Promise no intent nefarious, old friend?” Naz asked.

“That Tick out there almost flattened me, too. Had nothin’ to do with it’s rampagin’. Jus gettin’ off-world fer a bit. Breaks my probation, though. Don’t be a stickler on me?” she asked, stroking the kitten between its ears with two fingers in an attempt to alleviate her worry.

“We won’t rat on you, don’t worry,” Miya answered for the both of them, but Naz didn’t object to the sentiment.

“Nice. Thanks, you two,” Nina let out a breath of relief and smiled at them. “Not often I catch a heckin’ break. See ya.” Nina picked the kitten off her shoulder and plopped him into her lap where it proceeded to curl up and fall asleep. The connection went dark a moment later and Nina piloted Twinshya towards the city limits.

_ “Prudent, self-preservative, to report her.”  _ Naz mused.

_ “No. Nina’s good people. I won’t be that savage.” _

_ “Compassion to counterpoint ferocity~”  _ Naz giggled happily as Miya kept Titan moving towards the docks. Their uncle was there, talking into his hand terminal and pacing back and forth off to the side as Miya took Titan into its spot and started the power down cycle. A skeleton crew of technicians came out to apply the docking clamps and start the work of assessing the damage.

“Stampede really broke our fingers on this one, Naz,” Wasseim murmured as they approached, his typical jovial attitude gone.

Naz walked up to him and gave him a hug. He felt limp and defeated in her arms. “Embrace the despair, Uncle, for it gives us a connection to the lost, a link to what we share as a people.”

Wasseim laughed softly and bitterly, shaking his head. “Never gon’ understand ya, Naz. How’d the mission go, Miya?”

Miya pulled out of the hug and gave their uncle a much more neutral look. “Dismal. I brought a bad loadout and ended up pulling out early just to be safe.”

“Ugh. Our Blood’s in the water‘n our pants’re anklets on this one.”

“What made Talon go nuts like that? There’s no history of Talon having assault machines on Ishtar at all.” As Miya spoke, their uncle winced a little, looking guilty and worried.

“We got a tip. Someone buzzed in, tellin’ us this squad flattened some scavver hovel jus’ a lil’ outside’a the city limits. Ignored it as ‘sationalism. Payin’ for it now.”

“A confession, not an explanation. Guilt cannot salve wounds or conscience, Uncle.” Naz reached out and laid a hand on Wasseim’s shoulder, which just made him grimace a little.

“Guess. Can’t ‘splain the why of the attack, jus’ the how. Er… Gotta tell ya, Naz. Marielle’s hurt. In care now.” Wasseim ran his fingers through his greasy hair and looked off to the side, embarrassed.

_ “Why’s he got that look? Could it be his fault? How would Mari even get hurt?”  _ Miya’s accusatory thoughts surfaced, but Naz calmed them almost immediately. Miya didn’t have strong feelings towards Marielle, but she was concerned for Naz’ sake.

_ “Our Uncle adorns himself with guilt as a mantle, Miya. Negligent harm to my darling? Unbearable. Shatter his soul, the weight.”  _ Her thoughts were accompanied by a mental image of Wasseim being smothered by darkness, which Miya actually found vaguely amusing.

_ “Fine. Let’s just go see her, then. It’s kinda weird that you’re not more worried about your girlfriend, you know.” _

_ “Universe takes and gives. Only you, exempt from that cruelty.”  _ Naz giggled, the mirth finding its way into their face as she bid a confused and downtrodden Wasseim farewell. They headed off in the direction of the field hospital whose address he’d sent to her. Miya was a tad perturbed at Naz’ profession of faith as she always was, but didn’t make a fuss about it.

“You are  _ wrong.” _

“Ma’am, please, we need to run more tests.” The field hospital and Marielle were very easy to find. A massive sterile plastic tent was set up in the middle of a park, and within it, Marielle herself stood out amongst the patients. With just her robotic arm, Marielle wouldn’t have stood out much. Many ExSols had prosthetics, injuries were common in any scavenging outfit. Marielle often had multiple other robotic limbs attached to ports on her back. Right now, two massive spindly limbs emerged from her back and arched up over her shoulders to cast an intimidating profile over the poor medical staff. Marielle was constantly removing, attaching, and modifying her extra limbs and Naz rarely had any idea about what their specifications were. As far as she could tell those limbs were engineering attachments that could solder, weld, cut, repair conduit, and do various other tasks Marielle needed to work on her projects. There was another, thin-limbed arm curving around her waist that appeared to be inspecting the two staff in front of them like a curious pet.

“Your tests are useless. I’m heavily modded, it will throw all your metrics off. I need to run my own tests.” Marielle scowled at the nurse and her smaller robotic limb swayed back and forth a little.

“We can’t just… release you, it’s a liability issue,” they pleaded.

Marielle opened her mouth to argue, but before she could, she glanced to the side and saw Naz approaching. “Hey, Kit,” she grumbled, still maintaining her distance from the nurses and doctor. “You’re a Captain, aren’t you? Can’t you pull rank on these guys?”

“We’re not a military institution,” the doctor sighed, eyeing Marielle’s fidgeting robotic limb suspiciously.

“Resilient as a mountain, my darling,” Naz smiled at Marielle, taking her biological hand on hers and planting a kiss on it. “Regenerative physiology.”

“Oh, umm…” the doctor mumbled, looking down at their hand terminal. Naz wasn’t sure if Marielle’s gene mods included what could medically be defined as “Regenerative Physiology” but she did know that the doctor’s liability was different for patients who could be categorized that way. “...Is that true, miss?” they asked Marielle.

“Yes, amongst other things,” Marielle replied with an impatient scowl.

“Alright, fine,” they sighed, tapping a few buttons on the hand terminal and then pressing their thumb to Marielle’s medical bracelet to release the clasp. Without even the briefest pause to talk to Naz, Marielle stalked off, letting her trail along behind. Marielle stopped a short distance outside the tent and grumbled, stretching a little.

“Thanks, Kit,” she said with a sigh. “Been trying to get out of there for hours. It was getting real hard not to just disassemble someone.”

“Overjoyed, for your safety,” Naz giggled and snuck up behind Marielle, awkwardly hugging her from behind with the robot limbs in her way.

“I was never even that hurt,” Marielle scoffed, but her demeanor softened a bit and she turned around to return the hug. “Do you have any idea what really happened out there? Since when do the ANs attack a human settlement like that?”

“Enigmatic. Unknowable, the Precursors’ true intents,” Naz offered with a shrug.

“Well I need to get some bids in to the scavenging co-ordinators, I bet there’s some real fascinating parts in that Tick. Meet you later tonight, kit? Or is it Miya’s night?”

“It  _ was _ my night last time we saw you,” Miya scowled and crossed her arms, remembering Marielle’s... ‘surprise’ - a fake kidnapping.

Marielle snickered at that, “Sorry, it has to be a surprise from you if it’s going to be a surprise to Naz.”

  
_ “Purposeless to be bitter, sister.”  _ Naz offered Miya an apology, and as much as she wanted to be annoyed, she couldn’t be. The two did some negotiations quickly, and Miya quickly relented and let Naz have the night. She wasn’t horny enough to pick up someone mourning after the attack. The two of them headed home, the absence of an immediate goal causing their cumulative exhaustion to hit them hard.


End file.
